


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 


Chap,^/i Copyright No. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



























Coming of the King 


B h/ 

Walter Malone 


Author of “ Songs of Dusk and Dawn" and “ Songs of 
December and June" 



PHILADELPHIA 

PRESS OF J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
MDCCCXCVII 


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Copyright, 1897, 

BY 

Walter Malone. 


TO 


EDGAR FAWCETT. 



















^ THE COMING OF THE KING. 


“ Then shall the King say unto them on his right 
hand, Come , ye blessed of my father, inherit the king- 
dom prepared for you from the foundation of the world : 

“ For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat : I 
was thirsty, and ye gave me drink : I was a stranger, 
and ye took me in : 

“ Naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick, and ye visited 
me : I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 

“ Then shall the righteous answer him, saying , Lord, 
when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee ? or thirsty , 
and gave thee drink ? When saw we thee a stranger , 
and took thee in ? or naked, and clothed thee ? or when 
saw we thee sick, or in prison , and came unto thee ? 

“ And the King shall answer and say unto them , 
Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as you have done it 
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done 
it unto me .” — Matt. xxv. 34-40. 


I. 

There could be no doubt that Clarence Black- 
wood was irretrievably ruined, both financially and 
morally. 

Whenever he appeared among the good people on 
the streets of his extremely respectable village the 


THE COMING OF THE KING 


epithets “drunkard” and “gambler” followed him 
without fail. 

Fifteen years before, when quite a young man, he 
had inherited a splendid fortune from his father, 
but by extravagant living terrible inroads had been 
made upon his wealth. Night after night he had 
scattered his father’s long-hoarded gains in reckless 
amusements with which young men are so often in- 
fatuated. 

In addition to this, he had made the mistake of 
supposing that he could gain friends by assisting 
people financially. He had lent everybody money 
and endorsed everybody’s notes. Then the crash 
came. Of course, everybody said, “ I told you so.” 
It was perfectly natural for Parson Winkleton to re- 
mark with an air of profound originality that “a 
fool and his money are soon parted,” and nothing 
could have been more appropriate than to have Mrs. 
Evergood remark to a neighbor, over a cup of tea, 
in time-honored language, that “ wilful waste makes 
woful want.” But it did seem strange that so 
many of Clarence’s boon companions, who bad con- 
descended to drink champagne at his expense and 
done him the favor to accept sundry loans, should 
now remark that “ Blackwood is a good fellow, but 
too much of a bore.” 

And it did seem strange, though perfectly natural, 
I suppose, that the young ladies who had lent the 
lustre of their presence to his expensive balls and 
dinner parties in the past should now take the ad- 
6 


THE COMING OF THE KING 


vice of their prudent mammas and show a decided 
preference for other young men, who were plati- 
tudinous both in sentiment and intellect, but who’ 
had the honor of being called “ steady” by the good 
people of the little town. 

I had neglected to say, however, that although 
Clarence had certainly been very profuse in his ex- 
penditures up to this period, no one could say with 
justice that he had either drank or played to excess. 
He had simply been a jovial, reckless fellow, the 
dupe of pretended friends, and had found out too 
late the brutal, hackneyed truth, that all those al- 
leged friends would actually dispense with his com- 
panionship, and very comfortably, too, after they 
could no longer make it profitable. I merely make 
this remark parenthetically, however, for the fact re- 
mained that he had lost all his fortune, and that being 
the case, what is the use of excuses or explanations ? 

From that time, nevertheless, Blackwood became 
a changed man. He seemed to have learned no 
lesson from his experience, like good and discreet 
people ought to do, but he continued to lend to 
whomsoever asked, provided he had the requisite 
half-dollar or so, which, I am sorry to say, was 
generally not the case. While he of course did not 
have the same thoughtless confidence in human 
nature as in other days, still, when he possessed a 
dime, he would give it with a quiet resignation, if 
not the same cheerfulness, with which he threw 
away his hundreds and thousands before. 

7 


THE COMING OF THE KING 


But he did take to drink, and he did seek refuge 
in the haunts of the card-table with a recklessness 
truly reprehensible. Then money, friends, reputa- 
tion, and everything else necessary to gain a footing 
in this world were lost. 

About this time an incident occurred which would 
have been ridiculous enough had not the conclusion 
been so painful to Clarence himself. 

The news came to the quiet precincts of the village 
that Clarence’s uncle had died, leaving him another 
immense fortune, twice as large as that left by the 
father. 

This was quite unexpected, as the uncle had been a 
comparatively young man, of robust health, and who, 
living at quite a distance, had never visited Clarence 
or apparently cared anything for him. 

An attempt to portray the consequences of this 
extremely sensational news would be a task before 
which a pen like this might falter and stagger in- 
deed. 

Young ladies who had hitherto been chary of 
their smiles now fairly overflowed with sweetness. 

Prudent mammas, whose disapprobation had hith- 
erto been like the darkness of Egypt, which could be 
felt, strangely enough, began to embarrass him with 
profuse compliments, invitations to tea, sly taunts 
about his state of bachelorhood, coupling his name 
with that of their marriageable daughters and heap- 
ing upon him heaven knows how many other nice 
little nothings. They would often remark that 


THE COMING OF THE KING 


<c young men would sow their wild oats,” and that 
while they could not exactly approve of his past con- 
duct, he was a very good fellow after all. 

But it must be said here, though one may blush 
to relate it, that a later will of this uncle was found 
soon afterVards, by the terms of which all his fortune 
went to another relative, leaving Clarence without a 
dollar. 

Over the events that followed among the good 
people of the village of Weatherford, when they 
found themselves thus hoodwinked and hoaxed and 
made ridiculous, I beg to draw a curtain so thick 
that no crusty cynic may invade the sanctity of 
discomfiture with unhallowed footstep or with eye 
profane. 

Clarence for many days hardly ventured out of his 
door, because he felt that he had ceased to be an 
object of indifference, and had become a thing to be 
despised. 

Although he was, of course, the greatest sufferer 
through this turn of affairs, people actually seemed 
to blame him for the evil tidings, since it made 
laughing-stocks of them as well as himself. 

And now, at the time of the opening of this story, 
the end had come. 

The mortgage upon the magnificent old family 
mansion had been foreclosed, and the next day Black- 
wood would be turned out upon the streets. With 
his dissipated habits, it required no prophet to fore- 
see his utter degradation and desolation. 

9 


THE COMING OF THE KING 


But let no one suppose that merely because of his 
dissipation, Blackwood had become utterly depraved. 
On the contrary, during all his downward course no 
one was half so generous as he. I never knew him 
to refuse a favor unless absolute poverty prevented. 
No one had ever begged of him bread that he did 
not make the beggar fare sumptuously. No one had 
ever begged of him raiment whom he did not clothe 
in garments as warm as any king could wear. Many 
a poor man at Christmas had found a remembrance 
from the same hand. Many a time have I seen 
him, as he passed a child crying in the streets, stop 
that he might soothe its troubles. 

Why he should have persisted in his downward 
course to destruction was a mystery to many people ; 
but I suppose that, having discovered the utter 
ingratitude and selfishness of the world, he no longer 
had a desire to succeed in its society or its markets. 

Bitterly did he regret the past; bitterly did he 
lament over golden opportunities now passed away 
forever. 

But the world heeded none of his half-suppressed 
sighs. It was too busy congratulating the fortunate 
to sit in sackcloth with the unfortunate. 

Every day, when he heard a footstep at the door, 
he would say to himself, “ That is Jack, or Tom, or 
Harry, my good old friends of better days, who have 
come to condole with me and show that they are 
still friendly.” But when he answered the call he 
would find some importunate bill-collector. Yes, a 
10 


THE COMING OF THE KING 


bill-collector ! That is a friend indeed, for he is 
ever with you in your need : that is a friend who 
sticketh closer than a brother, for he does not desert 
you when the summer blossoms of prosperity have 
faded, but remains by your side through the gather- 
ing gloom of the November and December of finan- 
cial ruin. 

Every day when the postman came Clarence would 
say to himself, “ That is a letter from Blanche, iu 
which she will say that she loves me still and that 
she wishes me to come to see her again. She will say 
that she did not mean to hurt my feelings when she 
treated me so coldly the last time I saw her. She 
will tell me that she has been waiting, waiting, wait- 
ing all this time, hoping that I would come back. 
She will tell me that she would never have insulted 
me as she did had she thought I would have taken 
it in earnest ; she will tell me that she was only dis- 
guising her love with pretended indifference, and 
that she wishes me to forgive her ; she will say that 
she does not love that other fellow, who has neither 
soul nor intellect, but who is trying to buy her love 
with his money. She will tell me to come back to 
her ; she will help me to reform ; she will stand by 
me and encourage me till I am a man again, and 
then she will marry me.” 

But when the postman had delivered his mail, the 
letters were found to be insulting notes from trades- 
men clamorous for payment of overdue claims. 

Sometimes, when he would hear an unusually 
11 


THE COMING OF THE KING 


rapid footstep at the door, he would say to himself, 
“ Surely I cannot be mistaken this time ; some of 
the little school children whom I love so much, and 
whom I have petted and caressed so often, have come 
to see me, and they have probably brought me some 
flowers, or a piece of cake, or some such little trifle 
to show their love for me, and I will be prouder of 
that than if they brought a costly present from the 
richest man in the world.” 

But when he would go to the door, it was more 
than likely that he would be confronted by the 
sheriff, coming to make a levy upon his household 
furniture. 

And so on this day, as he strolled along the high- 
way to his home on the outskirts of the village, he 
was sick at heart, and his very soul was filled with 
loathing at his lot. 

Suddenly, however, he was confronted by a tramp, 
who, in the usual stereotyped way, told of inability 
to find work, of sickness, and of hard luck gener- 
ally. He gave the tramp a nickel, and as he pro- 
ceeded farther, he suddenly called to mind that that 
nickel was the last money he had between himself 
and the poor-house. 

But he would have cared little for that, had not 
Parson Winkleton, who happened to see the trans- 
action, informed him that the tramp was an im- 
postor, wholly undeserving of sympathy. “You 
are too generous to be just,” said the parson, and 
Clarence winced beneath the thrust of this well- 


12 


THE COMING OF THE KING 

worn but keen-edged old saying, whose brutal truth 
has wounded many and many a noble heart, and left 
it scarred and cankered and corroded. 

A few moments later he met the children coming 
from school, and he said to himself, “ Here at last 
I shall see beings who are free from calculation and 
deceit then he almost laughed like a boy himself 
as he thought of the days when they used to run 
to meet him with their little eager mouths lifted 
up for his kisses. But it had been a long time now 
since he had been able to buy them little toys and 
gew-gaws, and strange to say there was quite a lack 
of their old-time enthusiasm. 

But little eight- year-old Mary, his favorite, came 
last of all, running as fast as her tiny feet could 
patter, her blue eyes sparkling, her golden hair 
tangled over her shoulders, and her cheeks red with 
excitement. 

“ Oh, Mr. Blackwood,” she said, “ let me have a 
dime to buy some oranges.” 

His heart became a lump of lead in an instant. 
He felt in his pockets again, but they were empty. 

“ I haven’t a cent, little Mary,” he said, “ but I 
have a nice apple in my pocket for you.” 

“Oh, I don’t care for apples,” she answered. 
“Our orchard at home is full of ’em, and I don’t 
like ’em, anyhow. But I will see papa and get the 
money from him.” 

Then, as Clarence tried to catch her and take a 
kiss by force, she artfully slipped between his hands, 
13 


THE COMING OF THE KING 


rejoined her comrades far down the lane, and left 
him standing alone. 

He laughed in a mirthless sort of way, but for all 
his cynical expression, there was a lump in his throat, 
his chin quivered, his eyes were dim with something 
like tears, and his laugh changed almost into a sob. 

He dropped the apple in the dust of the road ; 
then he picked it up, as if it had been a scorpion, 
threw it in the dust again, and crushed it to pieces 
with a stamp of his foot. 

He hated this cruel frankness of childhood, which 
showed as much calculation and design as could have 
been unbosomed by Shylock himself. 

II. 

It was late in the afternoon of a day in June, and 
Blackwood sat alone in the old family mansion on a 
high hill overlooking the scattered houses of the 
village of Weatherford. This was to be his last 
day in the old home, for on the next morning the 
new master was to take possession. All the servants 
had been dismissed. Not even a dog was on the 
place ; they had been given away by the master, 
since he was no longer able to afford them shelter. 

The sun shone with a gentle glory in the mellow 
skies of summer. The yellow jasmines trailed with 
luxuriant clusters about the porch, and breathed such 
divine fragrance that the breezes reeled with delirious 
joy. The roses along the walk, arrayed in robes 
14 


THE COMING OF THE KING 


of crimson and creamy white, trembled and tingled 
with ardent embraces of the buzzing bees. 

But Clarence was at last aroused from his re very 
by the sound of barking dogs in the road below. 
The clamor increased until a stranger appeared, fol- 
lowed by the taunts and insults of a crowd of un- 
ruly boys and by a pack of yelping curs. 

There could be no doubt of it ; this man was a 
tramp or a beggar, and was being driven out. of 
town by the rabble. 

Clarence’s sense of decency was outraged. But 
the stranger, moving calmly before the crowd, with- 
out turning his head, came directly to Blackwood’s 
gate and stepped in. The rabble then retreated, 
and Clarence arose to meet the new-comer. 

He was a man apparently about thirty years of 
age, and was dressed in the plainest and coarsest of 
garments. While not noticeably odd, his clothing 
was quite old-fashioned, and seemed like the garb 
of some foreigner. 

“I have tried to get food and lodging for the 
night,” said the stranger ; “ but, as I had no money, 
I was turned away from every door, and I am sorry 
to say that I was treated with great rudeness be- 
sides.” 

“ You are welcome,” replied Blackwood ; “ but, 
as this is my last night here, you must content your- 
self with a very light supper; besides, I think we 
will be awakened quite early to-morrow by the new 
owner, who will then move in.” Clarence did not 
15 


THE COMING OF THE KING 


throw him a crust of bread, but treated him as the 
honored guest of a gentleman. 

The stranger then told how he had been mis- 
treated in the village; how this good lady had 
ordered him from her house ; how that substantial 
citizen had threatened him with a shot-gun ; how 
Parson Winkleton had remarked that he was doubt- 
less an escaped convict; how Mrs. Evergood had 
told him that she had no use for beggars, and, 
finally, how the boys of the street had pursued him 
unmercifully. 

Night having come at last, Clarence took his guest 
into the dining-room. All around the floor were 
scattered empty wine- bottles, ashes of cigars, and 
soiled playing-cards, giving silent but undeniable 
evidence of a revel some time before. 

“ You must content yourself with milk and bread 
and a little fruit for supper,” said Clarence. “ I 
would serve you better, but Wiggs, the groceryman 
down there, has refused me credit, and so I can 
offer no more.” 

“ Can it be,” said the stranger, “ that that man, 
whom you once rescued from financial ruin, should 
be so ungrateful as to refuse you meat and drink 
in the day of your misfortune ?” 

Clarence started with amazement, and asked the 
stranger how he could possibly have known this 
without having been told? But the mysterious 
guest artfully evaded a direct answer. 

16 


THE COMING OF THE KING 


Clarence then told the history of his past life, of 
his extravagance, and of his impending ruin. “ I 
have repented of my evil ways most bitterly,” he 
said ; “ but repentance, you know, cannot blot out 
the past.” The stranger evidently heard the story 
with regret, but offered no gratuitous advice aud 
spoke no reproaches. 

Then it began to dawn upon Clarence’s mind that 
his guest was not a tramp or beggar, — no, not even 
an ordinary man, but a person of great attainments. 

In appearance, too, his grace and his beauty were 
astonishing. His face was quite dark. His hair, 
hanging in gentle curls, was of a rich coppery 
brown, and shimmered in the lamplight with flashes 
of gold. His hands were delicately proportioned, 
but showed signs of menial toil ; his feet were 
small, but showed signs of many a weary jour- 
ney. But, above all, his eyes, of the richest, deep- 
est brown, were of matchless loveliness. They were 
as calm and as sweet as a twilight in October, with 
its dreamy shades, its tender after-glow and its dewy 
stars in the gathering dusk ; and while looking into 
their depths, you would dream of golden harvests* 
under a rising golden moon, the murmur of the 
reapers homeward bound, the tinkle of bells in the 
sheepfold, and the good-night song of the birds in 
the trees. 

He was a being whose nationality no man could 
tell, whose social rank no one could determine. He 
was probably of Eastern birth, possibly a Hebrew, 
17 


2 


THE COMING OF THE KING 


but he had none of the indolent air of the Asiatic 
and none of the volatile worldliness of the Jew. 
His manners were those of an European without the 
European’s self-satisfied bearing. His language de- 
noted secrecy, like that of the ancient Egyptian, 
without the Egyptian’s stern, hard-cut expression. 

As to his social position, his elegant mien pro- 
claimed him a prince, but his threadbare garments 
and his roughened hands proclaimed him a peasant. 
His knowledge of every subject in conversation 
showed him to be a man of wonderful culture, while 
his plain language and homely phrases placed him 
on a level with the most ignorant laborer. One re- 
markable feature of his character was that, while he 
was profoundly pious, his goodness was so modest 
as to be free both from bigotry and hypocrisy. It 
was not unpleasantly prominent. 

Many overly-good- people are so free from fault 
as to lose all charity for the sins of others. Not so 
with him, for his heart seemed to overflow with 
compassion for the faults of all. The piety of many 
people is wearisome, but his piety was grateful and 
refreshing to the soul. 

Blackwood was deeply interested in him ; nay, 
more, he was charmed, he was enthralled. 

After a very light supper they went out on the 
porch again. It was quite dark. The moon was 
not shining, but myriads of stars twinkled through 
the gloom. All was silent save the drowsy chirp 
of insects in the trees, while the powerful perfume 
18 


THE COMING OF THE KING 

of the jasmines and roses seemed to intoxicate the 
brain till it whirled in a maze of swoonful dreams. 
They sat talking until late in the night, the stranger 
in low, sweet accents charming Clarence more and 
more. 

All at once his demeanor altered ; from the gentle- 
ness of his first manner he changed into an eager, 
impassioned strain, like the wondrous fervor of the 
poets of ancient days. 

“ Listen, ” he said, placing his hand on Black- 
wood’s shoulder, and drawing nearer to him in the 
dark, — 

“ Listen. You have been wondering for hours 
in a vain attempt to know who I am. I will tell 
you. My father is a king in a wonderful land, 
thousands of leagues away. I am his eldest son, 
travelling over the world in disguise. I conceal 
my rank because I love all people, and I wish to 
tread undisturbed among them. My love for them 
is so passionate, so deep, that no one but myself can 
comprehend it. That is why I am here to-night.” 

Clarence sat still with amazement. Had these 
words been spoken by another he would have 
thought them the ravings of a madman ; but the 
terrible earnestness of those whispered words could 
not be distrusted. 

“ Listen,” continued the wonderful stranger, with 
ever-increasing intensity, “ my father’s kingdom is 
beautiful beyond expression. It lies far away be- 
yond the trackless oceans, where spring-time and 
19 


THE COMING OF THE KING 

summer go hand in hand forever. The roses there 
blossom all the year round. There the leaves 
never fall from the trees and the birds never cease 
to sing. September, with her mournful eyes and 
her hectic flush, never treads through those flowery 
fields, and December, with his chill winds, never 
enshrouds in snow the splendor of those glorious 
gardens. In that kingdom are stately palms and 
purple-clustered vines that bear fruit in all seasons. 
Free from all storms, the lotus blooms like a star 
on every wave, and the swan builds her nest undis- 
turbed by any hand. In the midst of that land is 
a wonderful palace, the home of my father, where 
the sound of the harp and the cymbal are never 
silent and Beauty and Bliss tread a delightful 
measure together forever. Nor does the soul ever 
tire of this excess of sweetness, but it swells with 
softest emotion, as though it were the heart of a 
bride on her nuptial day ; not a day of a few hours, 
but a day which lingers forever.” 

The eyes of the stranger now blazed with emo- 
tion, like palpitating stars in the darkness, and his 
language was so intense, so passionate that the 
ardent affection of the mother for her child, the 
burning caresses of the lover showered upon the 
lips of his beloved, the fierce passion of the tiger 
for his mate, were as mere shadows of its fearful 
earnestness. 

“And you, Clarence,” he continued rapidly, in 
the same eager whisper ; “ you I have found to be 
20 


THE COMING OF THE KING 

truly generous and lovable in a world of selfishness 
and ingratitude. Although your sins have been 
great, they are all blotted out. I was driven from 
every door in this village save yours. You have 
never known me, but I have always known you. 
You have always been my enemy, but I have always 
been your friend. I am a prince ; I am wealthy be- 
yond all calculation. You shall be my friend and 
my companion. You shall not awaken to a ruined 
life in the morning, but to-night you shall go with 
me to my home, where all is happiness and sweet- 
ness. I love you. Come !” 

Then the wonderful stranger arose like a magnifi- 
cent king and his locks shone in the darkness like a 
crown of gold. Clarence was amazed, and sank 
upon his knees. Then the terrible stranger’s hand 
fell upon his head like a flash of lightning, and all 
was over. 

But was it a truth, or was it a mere fancy of 
Clarence, in that terrible moment, ere the mighty 
hand descended, that as it was lifted, diaphanous 
and radiant with splendor, he saw, or seemed to see, 
a black scar in the centre of the palm, made as if 
by an iron nail ? 

The next day when the new master came to claim 
the house, Blackwood was found there on his knees, 
cold and still. 

“ Died of heart-failure,” said the physician. 

I once beheld, and shall never cease to remember, 
a celebrated picture, entitled “C’est l’Empereur !” 

21 


THE COMING OF THE KING 


in which Napoleon is represented as having surprised 
a sleeping sentinel. On the face of the sentinel is 
depicted the most intense awe and the most abject 
terror. Surprised and confounded he looks into the 
face of the great monarch, and doubtless in a moment 
thinks of the terrible punishment that may come, 
the trial, the sentence to be shot at daybreak, when 
his wife is to be a widow and his children to be 
orphans. Such, to some extent, was the expression 
upon the dead face of Clarence Blackwood. There 
was the blank amazement and the intense awe, but 
there was no terror, no fear of future punishment 
depicted there ; rather, I should say, he gazed with 
the consciousness of full pardon from his monarch, 
— his monarch, greater than Napoleon, — and his 
amazement and awe were softened and sweetened 
by an expression of deepest reverence and idolatrous 
love. 


22 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT 
MITCHELL. 


I. 

I, Cecil Dudley, gentleman, of the County of 
Devonshire, England, in this the year of our Lord, 
1617, being in a dying condition, make this, my last 
statement, concerning the authorship of the plavs 
and poems commonly ascribed to one William 
Shakespeare, of the Globe Theatre, in the City of 
London. 

I am now amid the wilds of that country known 
as North America, in the heart of a mountain range 
about one hundred and five and twenty leagues west 
of Roanoke Island. 

This mountain range, so the savages have told 
me, is the highest between the Atlantic Ocean on the 
east, and another great chain of mountains over a 
thousand leagues away to the west ; and I am lying 
under a shelving rock on the summit of the topmost 
peak thereof. 

I, Cecil Dudley, am the author of the plays and 
poems commonly ascribed to William Shakespeare, 
of the Globe Theatre, London ; but this, my last 
appeal to the world, may never reach the eyes of 
23 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 


mortal man until many centuries have passed, and, 
in all likelihood, not until the last day, when the 
trumpet of the angel Gabriel shall summon me and 
all mine enemies from the grave to meet face to face 
before the judgment seat of God. 


II. 

When I was a lad of very tender years, my 
father, Philip Dudley, conceived the plan of giving 
me, his only child, the benefits of such learning and 
companionship and travel as no youth in England 
had ever enjoyed before. I remember one day hear- 
ing him say to one of his friends, — 

“ My son hath a most marvellous intellect. With 
the blessing of God, I shall rear him as no child 
hath ever been reared before. He shall read from 
all the greatest writers; he shall study under the 
most skilful masters ; he shall travel through all 
known lands ; he shall learn the manners of all 
peoples and the customs of all countries. 

“No secret shall be hidden from him. The gates 
of all scholarship and all science shall be opened 
unto him. The common limitations of mankind 
shall not bind him. He shall become one with all 
the individuals of the world. Intellect shall hold 
converse with him in the idioms of every foreign 
tongue, and passion shall speak to him with the 
force and fire of every human dialect.” 

It is needless for me to narrate all the story of my 
24 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 


early education and training. It is enough to say 
that my father was true to his word, for, from my 
earliest years, I was taught by the most renowned 
tutors, and thereafter received instruction in the 
most famous colleges of all England. 

I became well versed in Latin and Greek, as well 
as the more wide-spread languages of later days. 

After leaving college, I travelled over all the 
^countries of Europe, as well as many in Asia and 
Africa. I visited ancient Egypt, and beheld the 
pyramids, which are the wonder of the world, and 
the face of the solemn Sphinx, who hath kept her 
secrets three thousand years. I wandered among 
the Ethiopians, far away in the kingdom of the 
Pygmies, where the Nile hath his source among the 
Mountains of the Moon, where the shadows from 
the sun point to the south and the sun himself 
riseth in the north ; I trod the mighty wilderness 
of the Ganges, where giant serpents crawl in mon- 
strous coils, and where the gorgeous blossoms 
breathe a deadly-poisoned odor. As a savage 
among savages, I hunted the lion and the tiger in 
the tangled mazes of Nubian forests; I wandered 
oven to the secret kingdoms of Thibet and Cathay, 
and the marvellous empires of Prester John and 
Kublai Khan ; I famished on the burning sands of 
Sahara, and sailed through the mountains of ice far 
away in the Northern Oceans. 

Then I returned to Europe, after ten years had 
passed, and in the course of time shortly thereafter, 
25 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 


wrote some lines of the poems which to-day bear 
the name of Shakespeare. 

In a few days after my return, it came to pass 
that my father died, leaving me without any close 
kin, and without fortune of any magnitude. But I 
felt that, with the help of God, my fame was as- 
sured, — such fame as would place my name above 
all the kings and conquerors of the world ; that 
would endure when all the thrones and sceptres and 
diadems of all the empires of all the earth had 
glimmered into darkness forever; when the earth 
herself had grown old and shrivelled and wrinkled,, 
and the sun had become dim and dull, and evens 
until the dawn of the day of judgment. 

But at this time a great calamity befell me, — a 
calamity such as cometh to the lot of only one man 
in ten thousand years, and beside which appear as 
nothing all other griefs and misfortunes of all men 
and all women, from the beginning to the end of the 
world. 


III. 

Hard by my father’s country home there lived a 
man whose name was Sidney Gorton, and who was 
a person of good birth and considerable fortune. He 
was my elder by only a few months, both of us 
being at that time thirty years of age. He lived 
at a country place, less than half a league from my 
father’s house, with his wife, whom he had wedded 
only a year before, and with his one child, a 
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MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 

daughter, who, as I learned, was a babe only a few 
months old. 

Let me again admonish my reader that I must 
hasten with this narrative, for I dare not dwell too 
long on the grievous recital of my great misfortune, 
which was soon to darken all my hopes and happi- 
ness, and mantle my name in obscurity forever. 

It is enough to say, let me repeat, that this man, 
Sidney Gorton, became mortally offended at a young 
man of talent and fortune, who lived in a neighbor- 
ing village, and whose name was Percy Leigh. I 
know not how the enmity between them arose, but 
it had grown to deadly hatred. 

As my evil genius would have it, this same young 
man and I were also enemies, having had harsh 
words about some trifle the very day of my return 
home. 

I had only returned two months before, and he, 
one of the few persons I had met, was now my foe. 

One night, while walking in the moonlight alone 
down the lane which led from my home to Gortou’s, 
I heard cries of distress in a field near by. I stole 
through a gap in the hedge, and, on reaching the 
open field, I beheld Gorton with six or seven of his 
retainers and servants standing over the bleeding 
corpse of Leigh. Then, in a moment, I divined the 
whole truth. The youth had been most foully 
waylaid and murdered by Gorton and his cowardly 
varlets. 

I turned, trusting that I might steal away unseen, 
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MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 

but they beheld me and called me back. It was 
useless to resist, for I was unarmed, and they were 
desperate. 

I reproached Gorton for his dastardly crime, but 
he replied, “ Since thou hast beheld this deed, I 
must save myself. We cannot conceal the murder, 
and as I and my men would otherwise hang for it, 
we will accuse thee of the crime.” 

I was struck dumb with horror at first, but at last 
found breath to gasp in reply, “ But no one would 
believe thee !” 

“ Assuredly they will,” he answered, “ for we will 
make seven witnesses to thy one. Our necks de- 
pend upon it, and thou mayest be sure that we will 
not lose this chance to save them.” 

“ Villain !” I gasped. 

“ Thou mayest be sure,” he continued, with a 
wicked laugh, “that I was crafty enough to make 
peace with Leigh two days ago. We shook hands, 
and the world will not believe that I meant to for- 
swear my pledge of friendship. As for thee, though 
thy quarrel with him was of little import, ye were 
never reconciled. Thou canst never escape from 
this snare.” 

Then I answered quickly, “ My father was a gen- 
tleman of birth and culture. Thou hast not the 
power to so blacken me, his son, in the eyes of the 
people as to have me condemned to death.” 

“ There thou art wrong,” he replied ; “ for thy 
father, who had never been rich, expended all his 
28 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 

money in thy schooling, so that thou art left without 
fortune or favor at court. Moreover, thou and thy 
father lived very little here. Both of you travelled 
the greater part of your time, and when living here 
you have always retired among your books, hardly 
noticing the country people, so that very few of 
them know you. But every peasant and every gen- 
tleman in the country knoweth me well, and I have 
ten times as many friends as thou couldst claim. 
Moreover, I have wealth, which thou hast not.” 

This brazen confession was more than I could en- 
dure, and so I smote him on the cheek with my open 
hand. He became crimson with rage in a moment, 
and rushed, with all his minions, upon me. 

I had always been a man of great strength and 
endurance. I felled two of the villains to the earth, 
but they soon overcame me, and beat me so unmer- 
cifully that at last I lay bleeding and senseless by 
the corpse of their murdered victim. 

I lay^in a swoon amid that horrible place till the 
morning came, when I awoke to find myself covered 
with the clotted blood of my own wounds, mingled 
with that of the murdered man. 

I surmised in an instant that the whole world would 
believe me guilty ; that the people of the country 
would soon be hunting me as though I were a fleeing 
wolf ; that my only safety was to be secured by flight. 

And so I fled from the scenes of my boyhood and 
early manhood forever. 


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The search was long, but unavailing, and at last 
it was believed by all that I had died. And so it 
came to pass from that unhappy day to this that I 
became dead to the world, and dead to hope and sun- 
shine and happiness. I became a flitting shadow, 
lost in the crowded streets of the great city of Lon- 
don, unknown and unnoticed during the length of 
my miserable life, and destined to be forgotten for- 
ever by the children of men through all the ages to 
come. 


IV. 

One day, nearly a year after I had left my home, 
I was wandering, ragged and downcast, through the 
streets of London. I had not eaten a crumb for 
nearly two days, and I had slept the night before on 
the steps of a church. I had endured the threats 
of the night watchman and the contemptuous re- 
buffs of the passers-by, from whom I had begged in 
vain. 

But this morning, as I was treading along, weak, 
famished, and discouraged, — ready, in sooth, to sink 
and die, — I was struck with the appearance of two 
men conversing together at the corner of this and 
another crowded street. One of them, by his comely 
face and gallant air, I knew to be Sir Walter 
Raleigh, the favorite of Her Majesty, and one of 
the best-known men in all London. 

But the appearance of his companion was much 
more striking. He was tall, but withal somewhat 
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MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 

heavy and corpulent. He had beautiful curly 
brown hair and beard, while his hazel eyes spar- 
kled with good nature. But there was, neverthe- 
less, an air of dissipation about his face, betokened 
by his flushed cheeks and eyes somewhat reddened 
by wine. 

As I hailed them, Raleigh walked away and left 
me face to face with his handsome companion. 
“ Sir,” I said to him, “ I am dying with hunger ; 
wilt thou give me aid ?” 

The stranger, abashed at first, soon recovered his 
ease, and answered in a gay, but kindly manner, 
“ I have never yet refused to help a man in a 
piteous plight like thine, my friend. I can feel 
for thee most heartily, for I once walked these 
very streets myself, begging as thou art begging 
now.” 

I thanked him for his kind words. Then he 
continued, “I like thy face, my friend, and thou 
art lucky indeed to have fallen in with me, for I 
am in a good humor to-day. Come with me to this 
tavern and we will talk of thy prospects over the 
cakes and ale.” 

It was easy to see that he was a happy, generous 
fellow, whose charity was only limited by his purse. 
We started down the street, and, after a pause in 
our converse, he said to me, u My name is William 
Shakespeare ; what shall I call thee?” 


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V. 

In this manner Shakespeare and I became the 
closest of friends. I told him the story of my life, 
and he was much moved at my misfortunes. 

I rewrote the few poems composed by me before 
that time, as well as I could from memory, and also 
wrote many others which are now well known to my 
countrymen. I showed these to Shakespeare, and he 
was much pleased with them. He had written a few 
plays himself, but they had little merit, as he was 
not a scholar and knew little of the art of poetry. 

When he had read my works he begged me to 
make myself known, saying that he believed that 
his friends, through the favor of the queen, would 
be able to save me from punishment. But I con- 
cluded, wisely or unwisely, that this would in all 
likelihood cost me my life, and so I refused to 
make the secret known. Then, in an evil hour, I 
bethought me of a plan to have the dramas played 
on the stage as the works of Shakespeare himself. 

I shall never forget the night upon which the 
work of my hands was first given to the world, 
though my soul should wander through the king- 
doms of the dead for ten thousand years. 

The play was “ Romeo and Juliet,” one of my 
earliest efforts. Shakespeare himself acted as stage- 
manager, and did not appear in the play at all, though 
he usually took some unimportant part, which he 
played indifferently well. 

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Her Majesty appeared in the theatre that night, 
bepowdered and bejewelled, attended by Sir Walter 
Raleigh, Sir Philip Sidney, and the Earl of Essex. 

At first the play aroused but little applause ; but 
later on, in that scene where Romeo and Juliet hold 
converse at night, she being in the balcony of her 
father’s house and he in the garden below, the 
assembled throng became tempestuous with excite- 
ment and cheered so loudly that it seemed that the 
very pillars of the building would fall, tottering 
before a giant power, greater than the mighty shoul- 
ders of Samson. 

It was easy to see that the play was to be a mar- 
vellous success, — such a success as Shakespeare, the 
reputed author, had never conceived as possible in 
this world. Still I observed that the great queen 
herself, even through this scene, had seemed to 
enjoy the play very little, and had not joined in any 
display of commendation from the multitude gath- 
ered there. The courtiers around her, narrowly scan- 
ning the features of her face and determined to praise 
and applaud or condemn and criticise only as she 
should do, likewise looked on in a careless manner. 

But when at last the players reached the fifth 
scene of the third act, where Romeo and J uliet are 
discovered together and Juliet saith, — 

“ Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day ; 

It was the nightingale, and not the lark 
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; 

Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree ; 

Believe me, love, it was the nightingale. ” 

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And then, later on, when sore afraid for the life 
of her lover, the damsel changeth her mind and 
crieth, — 

“ It is the lark that sings so out of tune, 

Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps 

I became aware that the queen was very much 
moved, and when the act was ended she led the 
great multitude in cheering not the players alone, 
but the author himself. The tumult was so great 
that Shakespeare, having been called for by a thou- 
sand tongues, stepped forth to the front of the stage. 
Then followed such cheering, such applause, and 
such greeting as had never before been given to 
playwright or to poet. 

It was a triumph such as even the great queen 
herself had never been given. 

I watched Shakespeare closely as he came forward 
to make his bow. He was grievously agitated, and 
one could see plainly that instead of enjoying his 
triumph he was dazed and frightened and con- 
founded. He knew that the fame was not justly 
his, and was smitten with terror at the perilous 
renown which had been thrust upon him by the im- 
posture. 

As for me, unhappy man, I crouched in a dark 
corner of the great theatre, sick at heart, and agi- 
tated to the very bottom of my soul, for I saw that 
my dreams of fame would perish. The mortal 
craves the immortal, and cannot rest without it. 

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That craving is like the love of the peasant for the 
high-born princess, whose bejewelled hand he longeth 
in vain to touch ; it is like the yearning of the fading 
flower for the far-away cloud in the dark, dewy 
skies; it is like the longing of the spirit for wings; 
it is like the lowliness of the dust which envieth 
the exaltation of the stars. 

But now I divined the whole fearful truth : I 
knew how the world would place the laurel upon 
the brow of another ; how the labor of mine hands 
would only make another rich and honored and 
famous; how the name of Shakespeare would be 
lisped by the tongues of babes to the end of time, 
while the name of Cecil Dudley would sleep in ob- 
scurity forever. 

VL 

After u Romeo and Juliet” had been given to the 
world many other dramas were written by me, and 
played as the others had been before them. They 
brought Shakespeare great wealth and an enduring 
fame. 

The money he always divided liberally with me, 
and he would have given me all had I not refused. 
But the fame he could not share with me. 

I would do him grievous injustice did I not say 
here that he took no pleasure in filching from me 
the fruits of my labor. In truth, he reproached me 
a thousand times, saying that I had forced him 
against his wishes to become a liar and a hypocrite 
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before the world. Many a time he entreated me to 
make the secret known, but I always told him that I 
dared not, for fear of my life, and told him, more- 
over, that the deception had been carried so far that 
it would not be safe for him to disclose the truth, as 
he would then be disgraced as a self-convicted im- 
postor himself. 

And so we lived on day after day, bearing a secret 
in our bosoms which was slowly stinging us to death. 

One night he and I sat with some convivial com- 
panions in the Mermaid Tavern. Marlowe was sit- 
ting in a corner, snoring in a drunken sleep ; Ben 
Jonson, almost as drunk as Marlowe, was nodding 
over a half-drained mug of ale ; Peele and Lodge 
were talking gayly with us, while Greene, with his 
tongue loosened by frequent sips of canary, was 
jesting in that unpleasant and familiar manner so 
common to the heavy drinker. 

“ Friend William/’ he said finally, between his 
hiccoughs, “we have often wondered how a man 
like thyself, who, to use the language of our drunken 
friend Jonson, knoweth little Latin and less Greek, 
who never beheld the inner walls of a college, who 
never was fifty leagues from home, can write such 
plays as they ascribe to thee. Pray tell us how this 
is done.” 

This was said with an arrogant laugh, and a wink 
at Peele and Lodge, which showed plainly that he 
did not believe Shakespeare to be the true author. 

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MANUSCKIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 

But Shakespeare overlooked this piece of arrogance, 
and excusing ourselves we soon left them. 

Nevertheless, from that time I was careful to 
write all my plays so that they should seem to be the 
work of a man who was not a scholar ; one, in sooth, 
who was a tyro even in geography and history. 

Tt was in this manner that I changed “ The Two 
Gentlemen of Verona/’ so as to make it appear that 
travellers went from Verona to Milan in a ship, 
when there is no sea between those two cities ; and 
in “ As You Like It/’ I made Rosalind treading 
through the forest of Arden, find a poem pinned to 
a palm by her lover, and Celia find a sheepcote 
fenced with olive-trees, and made Orlando kill a 
lioness, where neither a palm nor an olive nor a 
lioness are to be found. 

And so it was that I sullied these plays with 
many other gross misstatements, both of history and 
geography, making it in this manner all the more 
likely that the unlearned Shakespeare was in truth 
their creator. Moreover, I was always exceedingly 
careful, in all my poems, to avoid any allusions what- 
soever, save in the remotest manner, to any man or 
woman who lived in my own day, so that for all time 
to come men will marvel why this Shakespeare alone 
among all other writers maketh no mention of the 
great names and the great deeds of his own genera- 
tion. Yet in this manner I was enabled the more 
effectually to hide myself from those who were ever 
striving to unveil my secret. 

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VII. 

Many long years passed, and still my story had 
never been revealed to the world. 

As the days dragged on Shakespeare became more 
importunate than ever in his entreaties for a revela- 
tion of the truth. 

One night in June we sat together in his garden 
at Stratford-on-Avon. Both of us had grown pre- 
maturely gray, for the weight of this great secret 
had so lain upon our minds that we had become old 
before our time. 

The full round moon was just rising, bathing the 
lilacs and the eglantines in a flood of silvery light. 
A gentle breeze was swaying the boughs and the 
leaflets of the fruit-trees around us ; the dew-drops 
were twinkling w r ith the reflected radiance of the 
stars far above in the skies. There was no sound 
save the drowsy chirp of a thrush, who was lulling 
her little ones to sleep. 

It seemed as if all Nature was at peace; but 
in our hearts there was only uneasiness and 
unrest. 

“ The time will come,” he said, “ when we must 
make a confession to the world. I cannot wait 
much longer, for it grieves me beyond measure to 
live in such a maze of lies. Time, instead of heal- 
ing my wounds, only seemeth to make them more 
inflamed. My name, and the favor of my friends 
at court, will be strong enough to have Gorton pun- 
38 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 


ished, or else to secure a pardon for thee : I will not 
wear this mask longer.” 

So we lingered there, conversing together till late 
in the night. 

At last we determined that when we returned to 
London, in the course of a fortnight, we would make 
known the facts to the world. 

Then my friend bade me good-night, and left me 
alone in the garden. In a moment, however, I 
heard a rustle among the boughs of a laurel which 
grew by the garden wall. Lifting mine eyes, I be- 
held a beautiful maiden gazing at me from among 
the branches. 

The wall was quite low, so that I could observe 
her head and shoulders very plainly in the moon- 
light, and looking upon her I saw that she was 
young and of surpassing loveliness. 

I thought that she would turn and disappear as 
soon as she was aware that I beheld her, but she only 
hung her head timidly, as if desirous of speaking to 
me and yet fearing to begin. 

I approached the wall where she was standing and 
said, “ Dost thou wish to speak to me, my child ?” 

In the moonlight I could see that her cheeks were 
red with blushes, and her gentle blue eyes, lifted to 
mine for a moment, were soon cast down, as though 
she feared she had been too bold. I beheld her 
hand trembling, and though she sought to speak, 
her lips quivered so with her agitation that for a 
long time she could say nothing. 

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MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 

Then she faltered these words, — 

“ I have beheld thee often in this garden, and, 
having heard thy converse, I know thy secret.” 

When she had spoken thus, for a time I could 
not answer, so great was my amazement. Then I 
divined how these things had come to pass. She 
had overheard Shakespeare and myself as we con- 
versed together night after night in the garden, and 
thus had learned the whole story of my past life. 

“ And thy name?” I asked. 

“ My name is Edith, and I am the daughter of 
Sidney Gorton.” 

I was dumfounded ; I reeled in my tracks, and 
clutched the wall for support. 

“Thou the daughter of Sidney Gorton? Thou 
the daughter of the man who hath brought upon 
me so much anguish, who hath cursed my life and 
disgraced my name forever?” 

“ Yes, I am his daughter. But fear me not. I 
have seen thee here night after night, and my heart 
is bleeding with pity for thee. There is no one in 
the world, believe me, kind stranger, who would 
suffer as much as I to shield thee from harm.” 

“ But,” I replied, “ thou art the daughter of a 
man whom I have every cause to hate with a mortal 
enmity. It is not fit for us to meet here together. 
I must bid thee farewell.” 

“ Stay,” she spake in an eager whisper ; “ I told 
thee that thou hadst no cause to fear me, and that 
no one would more readily shield thee from harm 
40 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 

than I. Now I say to thee that there is not 
another creature in the world who cares for thee 
^s I do. 

“Oh, kind sir, do not forsake me, I pray thee. 
Listen to me. From my earliest days I have 
learned to love the poems of Shakespeare. In 
mine eyes there is no other being who hath ever 
lived, or who will ever live hereafter, whose genius 
«an approach that of the writer of those immortal 
poems. In my dreams I have seen this great poet, 
and held sweet converse with him. In my waking 
hours I have longed, unspeakably longed, to behold 
his face. To me he seemeth as a lion in strength 
and courage and grandeur, while all other men com- 
pared to him are as ignoble mice. 

“ Through all the years of my life he hath been 
the idol of my soul. So, when I discovered that 
thou hadst written those marvellous poems, my very 
soul leaped forth to greet thee. I have lingered 
here, day by day and night by night, to see thee, but 
I never found thee alone until this moment.” 

I was struck with amazement to hear this timid 
-damsel speak with so much eagerness and with so 
much fervor. I sought to harden my heart against 
her, but in vain. In despite of myself, I was 
strangely moved, and felt my whole soul yearning 
towards her. 

She was the first of all God’s creatures in all the 
world who had returned thanks to me for what I 
had done through all my years of toil, and the sen- 
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sation was sweet beyond compare. Then, forsooth, 
as if moved by sudden impulse, she spake again, — 

“I have often wondered whether the man who* 
conceived the beautiful figures of Juliet and Cor- 
delia aud Imogen and Ophelia and Desdemona 
was ever a lover himself. Canst thou tell me ?” 

For the first time in all my life this question had 
been put to me, and I answered sadly, — 

“ Nay, sweet damsel. I have lived among my 
books at home, and, when travelling, have wandered 
among unfriendly strangers; I have loved my 
ideals, but I have never yet beheld my dreams 
come true.” 

“ How marvellous !” 

“ Yet God hath so ordained it,” I said, “and I 
am now growing old. My many sorrows will soon 
bring me to the end, without having beheld in flesh 
and blood the thrilling scenes of love which I have- 
so often sought to portray in verse.” 

“ But,” she rejoined eagerly, “ though thou art 
growing gray, methiuks thy love would be stronger 
and sweeter than the love of any other man who 
hath lived since Adam first loved Eve. I would 
rather win such love than be the consort of a king. 
I would rather win the caresses of such a man than- 
those of the youngest and comeliest knight who ever 
poised his lance on a tented field.” 

Then she ceased suddenly, abashed at the boldness 
of her words and sorely frightened at their meaning, 
which she had vainly sought to conceal. 

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Then my heart throbbed with the wildest emo- 
tion. Dreams of bliss and beauty unspeakable flitted 
through my brain. My furrowed cheeks flushed, 
and my breath came like the painful panting of a 
wounded deer. After all these long years of anguish 
and misery and grief and desolation and despair in 
my soul I became young and happy and handsome 
again. The withered tree was bursting forth in 
flower and leaf and fruit ; the snows of winter were 
melting before the glory of a rising sun, and the 
world was thrilling with the warbling of a thousand 
happy birds. 

I, with my gray locks, had become a youthful 
Romeo, gazing with unutterable passion into the 
eyes of mine enemy’s daughter, one far lovelier and 
sweeter than the Juliet of my dreams. 

“ Dost thou love me ?” 

But she answered not. 

“ Edith ! Edith !” I cried, “ I am no longer young 
and gay and handsome. I became a reproach and 
an abomination in the eyes of men long ago, when 
thou wert only a babe. There are tens of thousands 
of men in the world who have riches and youth and 
beauty, which I have not. I have nothing to offer 
thee but a broken heart. Wilt thou take it, or wilt 
thou cast it in the dust?” 

She was marvellously agitated ; her cheeks became 
richly red and then deathly pale ; she was trembling 
like a captive dove ; she gazed up into my face with 
her great, soft eyes, as a white doe looketh with gen- 
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tleness and tenderness into the eyes of her master, 
and then she let them fall in modest confusion. 

In an instant I clasped her in my arms. Then, 
for the first time in all his life, the true Shakespeare 
pressed a lover’s burning kiss upon the lips of his 
beloved. 

VIII. 

I need not tell how, night after night, I met the 
beautiful damsel beneath the mellow moon and the 
twinkling stars, whose splendor hath shone on so 
many millions of trembling lovers, and whose secrets 
they have kept for thousands of years, when the 
lovers themselves have mouldered through ages in 
their dusty shrouds. 

At the time I first met Edith her father was away 
in London, but he soon returned, and our meetings at 
last grew perilous indeed. 

One day, Shakespeare, having just returned from 
London, came to me with a smile and said, — 

“ I wish thee a long life and much happiness. I 
come to bring thee joyful tidings, my friend. I 
have just learned that Gorton, thine enemy, is be- 
lieved to be implicated in the troubles of Sir Walter 
Raleigh. There is no proof whatsoever against him, 
but he is under suspicion, and this is the time to 
make thy story known, for no one will befriend him 
now, and thy version of his crime, unaided by auy 
other witness, would overcome a score of witnesses 
for him, and would surely bring him to the block.” 

For the first time in many months, Shakespeare 
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MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 


seemed happy, and he looked twenty years younger* 
He felt that a great burden was about to be lifted 
from his soul forever. 

But as for me, these tidings only brought bitter- 
ness and despair. They were the death-warrant of 
all my hopes of happiness. 

I had longed to secure a pardon, and thus be 
enabled to live in the light again ; to cast aside the 
shroud of a living death, and to tread forth from 
the coffin and the charnel alive again. But this 
was at the price of the death and disgrace of the 
father of the woman whom I loved, for whose sake 
I would have lived through a hundred hells and 
died a thousand deaths ; for whose sake my soul had 
arisen from a hopeless tomb, and for whose sake my 
withered heart had budded and blossomed like the 
gardens of paradise. 

Then I turned from Shakespeare without even 
giving thanks, or showing the slightest gladness at 
his tidings. 

That night, as I clasped my precious idol to my 
bosom, and felt her warm young heart throbbing 
wildly against my own, and as I trembled beneath 
her palpitating kisses on my lips, I sobbed deep 
down in my soul, — 

“ Once more I shall resign my hopes, my happi- 
ness, my name, and my fame. I shall remain dead 
to the world that the father of my beloved may 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 


live. I could not enjoy the mockery of earthly glory 
when her heart had been broken by me. My secret 
shall continue unrevealed. I forsake the throne, the 
crown and the sceptre of an empire that shall never 
pass away, to press to my bosom for a few fleet 
moments the bosom of the woman whom I love. 

“ Farewell to Hamlet, to Othello, to Macbeth, to 
Lear ! Farewell to the grotesque figures of Falstaff 
and Bardolph and Touchstone and Audrey and 
Dame Quickly, whose quaint jests shall be a merri- 
ment to the world when their creator hath mould- 
ered in his coffin a thousand years ! 

“ Farewell to Juliet, to Imogen, to Desdemona, to 
Ophelia, to Cordelia, and Viola ! I turn my face 
forever from ye ? the children of my fancy, to live 
with the maiden who is sweeter and lovelier than the 
fairest among ye. For her I sacrifice my heart in 
more bitterness and anguish than ever fell to the lot 
of the most unhappy of ye all ! 

“ I renounce the empire of the world of poetry 
and song and story, with the stately figures of its 
. kings and queens ; its beauteous maidens and impas- 
sioned lovers ; its high-born ladies and noble knights ; 
its deeds of daring and renown ; its evergreen gar- 
lands and its fadeless flowers, to be monarch for a 
few hours of the heart of a mortal woman.” 

IX. 

After a few days passed I told the whole truth 
to Shakespeare, and further confided to him the fact 
46 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 

that I had determined to go with Edith to North 
America, there to live a new life, to forget the 
miseries of my early days in the blissful blessing of 
her infinite love. But before I parted from Shake- 
speare, we agreed that in case Gorton died before 
him, he would make the secret known ; and if he 
died before Gorton, he would leave among his papers 
a statement of the whole truth to be given to the 
world at a later day. 

Then, after a fortnight passed, Edith and I em- 
barked with a number of colonists in London, and 
sailed for Roanoke Island, the place of the first 
settlement of Englishmen in North America. 

I pass over in a sentence the storms at sea, and 
the other perils which befell us on our way. I 
hasten by the terrible story of our many sufferings 
after we disembarked ; how the colonists, one by 
one, died of hunger and cold ; how we finally left 
the island, and journeyed over the mainland, vainly 
hoping for a peaceful resting-place; how we en- 
countered the wild beasts of the forests, and how 
our numbers dwindled day by day before the deadly 
arrows of the cruel savages, until only Edith and I 
were left; how I swam with her over mountain 
torrents and led her by the hand through trackless 
forests; how I learned at last from the broken 
accents of some friendly savages who had overtaken 
us that her father had been pursuing us with a 
number of followers; how all his company, too, had 
been slain by the savages; how he was pursuing us 
47 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 


alone, and how, that we might elude him, we came 
to the summit of this great mountain in this deso- 
late wilderness, where I am now dying. 

X. 

Morning was rising over the great eastern moun- 
tains with a splendor never beheld since the dawn 
of the day of the resurrection of Christ. The sun 
came forth like a marvellous blossom, with petals of 
sparkling silver and a heart of dazzling gold ; the 
vast white clouds were rolling far down below us- 
like an ocean lashed into ungovernable fury, while 
the tops of the highest peaks arose above them 
like rocks around which the foaming billows beat 
with a terrible rage. Here we stood together on 
the summit of this giant peak ; we could see for 
half a hundred miles on any side, but there was no 
human habitation and no trace of mankind far or 
near. All was vast solitude and unutterable loneli- 
ness. We were now in a wilderness where the foot 
of civilized man had never trod since the creation 
of the world. 

Yet had we remained there alone and undisturbed 
we would have been wondrously happy still. I 
gazed upon the face of Edith, and there beheld such 
sweetness and loveliness as eometh to the angels in 
their blissful dreams. In her cheeks I saw the blos- 
som of the lily, the bride of spring, and of the rose, 
the queen of summer, one robed in radiant purity 
like the morning star, the other decked in the crim- 

48 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 

son flame of the dying day. In her eyes I beheld 
again the splendor and the glory of my vanished 
youth, bringing to my languishing soul once more 
the departed joys and the exultation of his morning 
hours. 

But our solitude was at last broken, for Sidney 
Gorton, the evil genius of my life and the father 
of the woman whom I loved, weary and worn with 
travel, came following us to our hiding place. His 
face was furrowed with suffering and livid and hag- 
gard with hatred. I dared not look into his eyes 
that seemed to burn in his great wrinkled brows like 
pits of fire. Edith fainted with terror in my arms, 
but I laid her aside gently and prepared to defend 
her to the death. 

“ So have I found thee at last, in another world,” 
he said. “Thou hast stolen my daughter, but, 
though I never hope to leave this savage world 
alive, I am determined to kill thee and tear her 
from thee !” 

But I replied to him gently, “ Do not pursue us 
farther ; thou hast already desolated my life forever ; 
for I have forsaken my name and my fame to die in 
darkness and obscurity, that thou, the father of the 
woman whom I love, mayest live.” 

“ But I hate thee,” he answered, “ because I 
wronged thee. Thy very name, thy very existence 
is a reproach to me, because I am the author of thy 
downfall. 

“ And now, before I slay thee, I will tell thee of 
49 


4 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 

that which will make thy death more bitter still. 
Shakespeare is dead ! He died a few days after thy 
flight, very suddenly, before he had time to make 
thy secret known to the world, and so it hath per- 
ished with him forever.” 

Then, in sooth, I felt such anguish as was endured 
only upon Calvary by our Master, as He shed His 
tears of blood. The very echoes of the mountains 
for leagues around seemed shouting through that 
vast solitude : 

“ Shakespeare is dead ! Shakespeare is dead ! ” 

No, not dead ! for his memory and his glory were 
to live till the sun should be blown out by the 
breath of God, and the stars, the crown jewels of 
heaven, should cease to sparkle on the brows of 
the angels, while the name of Cecil Dudley was to 
remain unspoken by lips of men to the end of time. 

Then I beheld, as in a vision, the tomb of Shake- 
speare, to which pilgrims would come in the ages 
yet to be, bearing with them garlands of flowers to 
lay above his dust. I beheld long processions of 
statesmen and singers and poets and philosophers 
treading reverentially above his ashes, and cele- 
brating his genius in all the tongues of earth. I be- 
held warriors of renown and princes and kings and 
queens and emperors baring their heads and speak- 
ing in awe-struck whispers beside the grave of him 
whose dominion extended over all lands and over all 
nations, and should endure when their own had 
crumbled like the ashes of the roses which they 
50 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 


strewed above him. Then I thought bitterly of my 
own tomb, far away in this savage laud, where never 
a pilgrim, be he a monarch or a beggar, shall ever 
come to leave even a poor chaplet of violets or of 
daisies. 

Gorton seemed to divine the trend of my thoughts, 
for he said, " Certain it is that Shakespeare himself 
did not desire to enjoy the fruits of thy genius, for 
he seemed to know that hereafter the people of Eng- 
land, proud of the ashes of such a great poet, would 
desire to have them removed from Stratford and 
buried in Westminster amid the dust of kings and 
queens, so he gave instruction that these words 
should be graven upon his tomb : 

‘ Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear 
To dig the dust enclosed here : 

Blest be the man that spares these stones, 

And cursed be he that moves my bones.’ ” 

These words of Gorton pierced my heart like a 
dagger that hath been steeped in the venom of a 
viper. Still I did not smite him, for he was the 
father of her whom my soul adored. But he said 
at last, — 

“ Why hast thou brought my daughter here to 
dishonor her? I loathe her since thou hast defiled 
her thus.” 

This was an insult which I could never forgive, 
and it drove me at last to the madness of a rage that 
cried aloud like a wild beast for prey. I sprang 
61 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 


upon him like a tiger which hath starved for three 
days and is furious for the taste of blood. 

Mine enemy was a giant in strength and stature, 
but he was no match for me in swiftness and skill. 
Though both were weary and worn and famished, 
we fought with the frenzy of despair. I had no 
weapons, and he was not swift enough to draw his 
dagger, so we fought with our bare fists. Never 
had I before, in conflict with savage or with wild 
beast, fought such a fearful battle. We struck each 
other and tore each other’s quivering flesh like two 
mad bulls in the last agony of a mortal combat. 
He had thrown off his cloak, and his great muscles 
were twisted on his arms like chains of steel ; his 
flesh was as firm and as hard as a coat of mail ; his 
fists fell in terrific blows with the ponderous weight 
of iron hammers. 

After a while his superior strength began to give 
him the better of the fight. I retreated, but he 
closely followed, and it seemed that he would surely 
smite me to death ; but at last, by a sudden and 
terrible blow, I felled him, bruised and streaming 
with blood, to the earth. But he quickly drew his 
dagger and started at me again. Then his daughter, 
my own Edith, recovering from her swoon and see- 
ing that I was about to be slain, rushed between 
us. In an instant the flashing dagger, aimed at me, 
buried his flaming wrath in her bosom. Both of 
us threw our arms around her, the father and the 
lover, frantically fighting and struggling for her 
52 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 


bleeding body; then her father, snatching the 
smoking weapon from her breast, drove it, like the 
terrible horn of a behemoth, in mine. In an in- 
stant I felt the iciness and gloom of death steal over 
me. Then, with a mighty effort, I wrenched the 
dagger from his hands and pierced the depths of 
his shuddering heart. 

It is now growing dark and cold and late. Mine 
arm hath become so stiff that it will no longer 
bend ; my hand is so numb that it will no longer 
write, and my blood hath become clotted and con- 
gealed. The sun is sinking in solitary splendor far 
away over the trackless forests of the West; thou- 
sands of snow-birds, which remain here during the 
summer, are gathering with a great chattering cry 
in the trees for the night. The gray mountain 
wolves are gathering by. scores around me; I see 
their gaunt sides quiver and their cruel eyes of fire 
glare upon me as they draw nearer, hardly waiting 
for me to die, when they will tear to pieces the 
flesh of myself and my beloved and her father, who 
have perished beside me. 

Fain would I bury her safely from their cruel 
hunger ; but I am weak and cold, and the everlast- 
ing night is swiflly settling over mine eyes. Nearer 
and nearer come the shaggy wolves with their cav- 
ernous eyes of fire; their low growls are almost 
whispered in mine ears, and their hot breath almost 
burneth my face. 


53 


MANUSCRIPT FOUND ON MOUNT MITCHELL 

It is growing darker and colder still ; the sun 
hath sunk far away in the west, and I am left 
dying alone, thousands of leagues from England, 
the home of my boyhood, in this desolate land of 
savages. 

But I will bury my manuscript under this shelving 
rock, hoping, vainly, perhaps, that at some far dis- 
tant day the world will learn the true story of him 
who wrote the poems of Shakespeare. 


54 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE 
MOON. 


i. 

After the lapse of hundreds of thousands of 
years the moon was at last a dying world. 

It had become a gigantic ruin, a vast expanse 
of desolation, strewn with fragments of departed 
grandeur. 

Like a wreck it went drifting through the black 
ocean of the unfathomed universe. Like a withered 
old man it staggered and tottered around the earth 
and the far-away sun. 

Its skies had once been a lovely blue ; they had 
blushed with the morning and mellowed with the 
noon ; but they were now black, and the sun arose 
and set within them like a great lamp in the dark- 
ness of a sepulchre. The stars shone in their depths 
during the day as well as the night. There was no 
longer a flush before the rising of the sun, or a 
twilight after its setting, but it would suddenly 
flash from behind the mountains, lighting up that 
waste of tombs with a fearful brilliancy, as though 
every cliff and crag were ablaze. At night it would 
drop like a ball of fire, and in a moment pass from 
55 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


view, leaving such profound darkness that one 
might feel that he had been buried alive, and 
was blindly groping through the dwellings of the 
dead. 

Then after awhile the earth would come to view, 
not like the golden moon arising to light the earth, 
but first like a great jagged sword-blade, next wax- 
ing in size till it became round like an immense 
shield of spotted bull’s hide, or a gigantic mush- 
room in the black abyss of the sky. Then it would 
wane till it passed from sight. But it would never 
rise or set, as it always appeared nearly in the same 
place. There was no softness, no mellowness in its 
light, — nothing but stern grandeur and Titanic 
majesty. 

The fields of the moon had once been as green as 
emerald with grains and grasses, but they had all 
withered away into one desert, yellow and gray and 
brown, a waste of rock and sands. 

Once the forests had tufted every hill and waved 
over every valley, but they had fallen one by one, 
till the oaks of the north and the palms of the 
south had alike become traditions thousands of years 
before. 

The moon had once been mottled with azure 
oceans, while its lakes had nestled within its bosom 
like caskets of pearls and its rivers like threads of 
silver ; but these had all passed away, leaving arid 
plains, rugged chasms, deep gashes and seams and 
scars. 


56 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


Like the seas and the lakes and the rivers, the 
clouds had also vanished with their primeval glories 
of scarlet and purple and gold. 

Far, far away in the past the ancient poets of the 
moon had told of flowers of blissful odors and of 
gorgeous colors, and of birds of magnificent plumage 
and of peerless song. But those poems had been 
written in forgotten tongues, among forgotten peoples, 
and in forgotten lands. 

Ages upon ages before, their historians had written 
of splendid cities, of great wars, and of mighty 
conquerors. But those cities had been buried be- 
neath the sands of the desert, the wars had left not 
a trace behind, the conquerors had been forgotten, 
and their historians had perished after them. 

II. 

And now the time had come when less than a 
hundred people were survivors of all the many 
millions who had once lived upon the moon. 

They were all gathered together in a great circular 
valley near the lunar equator. 

This valley had once been the crater of an im- 
mense volcano, which had now become nearly ex- 
tinct. The mountain had sunk lower and lower 
through countless ages, till its crater was now 
several thousand feet below the surrounding country, 
while its craggy edges still rose far above the level 
of the outer world. 

This volcano would have been entirely extinct, 
57 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 

save for a newer and smaller crater which had 
arisen centuries before, and still burned like a crim- 
son torch by night and wreathed itself in smoke by 
day. Low rumblings could sometimes be heard far 
down in its fiery bowels, but it had long since ceased 
eruptions, and, like the rest of the moon, was surely 
dying. 

The planet had lost nearly all its atmosphere, but 
down in this valley there was still a thin remnant 
of air, more meagre than that on the tops of the 
highest mountains of earth. Through cycle after 
cycle this atmosphere had become thinner and thin- 
ner, and, although the inhabitants of the moon had 
grown somewhat accustomed to its rarefied state, it 
had at last gone beyond the endurance of most 
human beings, and millions of people had perished. 

The lunar world, outside of the torrid zone, had 
also been growing colder and colder. The arctic and 
antarctic regions had become depopulated five hun- 
dred thousand years before. Then the temperate 
zones, as the atmosphere began to rarefy, grew chilly 
and bleak and desolate, till all of their millions had 
fled to the tropics or died of hunger and cold. In 
the tropics they endured parching heat by day and 
freezing cold by night. 

Far away in forgotten ages the earth itself had 
been a molten mass, giving warmth and good cheer 
to the moon, but its surface had cooled in the long- 
lapse of time, and the loss of that heat, together with 
the loss of its own atmosphere, had at last swept 
58 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


away nearly all the lunar inhabitants, even in the 
tropics, until there was left only this poor remnant 
of less than a hundred souls. 

So here in this valley, near the equator, they made 
their last feeble rally, breathing its thin sheet of air, 
crouching for warmth close to the flames of the 
dying volcano, or hiding under jutting crags from 
the vertical rays of the sun of the torrid zone. Dur- 
ing the long days the glare of the sun would be 
almost insupportable, but when the night came there 
would once more be intense cold, even in the midst 
of a tropic summer. All the people feared that 
this year would be their last upon the moon. When 
another cold season should come they would all perish. 

Breathing had become difficult and painful, — so 
painful that often drops of blood would trickle from 
their lips and nostrils and even from their eyes and 
ears. 

There was only one pool of water left, — a beauti- 
ful, tiny lake, as clear as crystal, fed by some small 
spring. But this they feared might be exhausted at 
no far-distant day. 

All the birds had passed away except a few little 
brown sparrows, whose melancholy chirp awoke no 
echoes in that skeleton world. All the wild beasts 
and reptiles had died in days of the long ago ; only 
a few domestic animals were left ; the horse had but 
recently become extinct. No dumb brutes seemed 
to thrive well except the mountain goats belonging 
to the tribe. Then there were a few white shaggy 
59 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


dogs, which were still hardy and vigorous and still 
remained faithful to their ancient master, — man. 

All the trees had perished except the pines and 
hemlocks. Only three varieties of flowers remained. 
They were not of any class known to the earth, but 
were similar to some that might be named. 

There was a beautiful little blue flower springing 
on a tiny stem from the ground, somewhat like the 
bluet of our early April days. There were myriads 
of these clustered closely together, so that in places 
the earth seemed covered with a lovely velvet of 
azure. 

Then there were magnificent bowers of a gorgeous 
blossom living in that climate with the hardihood 
and splendor of the cactus of earth. No word of 
earthly language, however, could describe the glory 
of their form and coloring. They blazed into fiery 
clusters of yellow and crimson and scarlet and 
purple. Some were like glittering shields of brass, 
some like the red scarfs of an enchantress, some 
like the ruby-colored robes of an emperor. 

Then in the ravines and in the forsaken depths of 
desert lakes, where some moisture still remained, 
there was an immense wilderness of monstrous mush- 
rooms, blossoming like a forest of marble. Some 
arose like Corinthian columns of alabaster, some 
like giant lilies, some opening like trumpets, some 
shaped like stars, some like hideous dwarfs turned 
into stone, some like ghosts arising from their pallid 
shrouds. 


60 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


III. 

The sun had risen far away over the serried 
mountain crags of the moon. There it hung, a 
globe of fire in a sky of ebony, as terrible as the 
face of Satan in the bottomless pit. Never before 
had its all-seeing eye beheld so awful and so deso- 
late a world. 

There were hundreds of cliffs rising one by one 
beyond each other. There were thousands of peaks 
piercing through the darkness as shining and sharp 
as the spears and sword-blades of an advancing 
army. There were precipices that no mountain goat 
could climb. There were caverns the depth of which 
no man could tell. 

Far, far away on every side arose the ruins of an 
immense city, once the abode of three millions of 
people, but now an untrodden desert of tombs. In 
the moon, where all things weighed five or six 
times less than upon the earth, the buildings of the 
cities were far more stupendous and magnificent 
than in our world. The labor required to raise the 
immense blocks of marble to the height of their 
palaces was less than that of erecting our humblest 
huts. So the ruins of this city surpassed the 
wildest dreams of earthly architects. There were 
columns and porticos, temples and theatres, palaces 
and triumphal arches. 

Science and art had progressed with the people 
of that world in many respects much further than 
61 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


upon the earth, even in our own day, though on 
account of the scarcity of population, most of these 
advantages had been lost. 

When this city had been at the height of its 
glory all property was held in common, and the 
strength of an omnipotent state had been exercised 
in rearing such magnificent public edifices as would 
shame the feeble efforts of the scattered individual 
autocrats of our own world. 

At the entrance to the city were two prodigious 
figures of iron, each over two thousand feet high, 
one representing the earth and the other the sun. 

The earth was shown in the guise of a woman, 
seated upon a gigantic elephant, holding two naked 
babes to her breast and wearing a crescent upon her 
forehead. 

The sun appeared as a handsome young man, 
holding a torch aloft and astride a great lion with 
the wings of an eagle and the head of a dragon. 

These statues had been erected as the city first 
began to decay from its splendid state. Its people 
at the height of their civilization had discarded all 
ideas of polytheism and all superstitions respecting 
a personal God, but at last began to lapse into 
idolatry as of old, and returned to the worship of 
the earth and the sun, according to the custom of 
their barbarous ancestors. 

Alone at the gateway of this city stood the Prin- 
cess Callistano, the last of all her race. She was 
like a lioness of the ancient days of the moon, 
,62 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


with tawny golden hair, dusky brown eyes, and an 
imperious air. 

She had been waiting, waiting, waiting impa- 
tiently there for more than an hour, and yet the 
one whom she was expecting had not come. Vainly 
did she curve her hands above her eyes and gaze far 
over the deserts ; vainly did she peer through the 
wilderness of ruins for a sight of her recreant lover. 

Then her mind wandered in remorse and despair 
over her treachery of the past. Only one short 
year before she had belonged to a neighboring 
tribe in another circular valley near the equator. 
That nation and this with which she was now living 
had been deadly foemen for a long time. Though 
each clan had been wasting day by day for lack of 
air and water and from excessive heat and cold, 
they had continued to kill each other in ferocious 
wars. Though the gods seemed to have sworn to 
destroy the people of the moon, the mortals had 
themselves aided in the work of extermination. 
In vain had their wise men warned them against 
slaying each other, and begged them instead to 
seek salvation from the doom which was fast ap- 
proaching. 

Only twelve months before there had been ten thou- 
sand people living in that world. What a pitiful 
remnant was now left ! The two nations then fought 
the last of the battles on the moon. Three thou- 
sand men perished, and one could see that the end 
was coming rapidly. 


63 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


Then the victorious army, led by their young 
prince Lileo, besieged the last citadel of her un- 
happy nation. This stronghold was occupied by 
an aged king, the father of Callistano. But the 
daughter was treacherous to her father and to her 
people for love of Lileo. This remaining fortress 
of her nation was a great cavern in the side of 
an immense wall of rock, hundreds of feet above 
the ground and midway between the base and 
the summit. The plan of the besiegers was to sur- 
round this stronghold and starve the inmates into 
surrender. 

But there was a spring inside the fortress, and the 
garrison had stored enough provisions to last several 
months. Then the besiegers were lacking food and 
water themselves, and they would have been thwarted 
in their plans save for the treachery of Callistano. 
She had secret communications with Lileo; then 
she enabled him and his army, by means of rope- 
ladders, to gain access to the fortress. 

She had made him promise that he would spare all 
her people ; but he slew her father and all his sub- 
jects, save Callistano herself, and fifty others who 
were made slaves. 

All these terrible scenes hovered before the mind 
of the princess as she waited there for her lover in 
self-contempt and shame. At last Lileo came. 

He was tall, erect and handsome. But, unlike 
all other men on the moon, his face was swarthy 
and his eyes and hair were black, like that of the 
64 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


people of the tropics in ancient times. There was 
a cruel gleam in his eye and a cynical smile on his 
lips. 

Callistano ran to him, fell on his neck, kissed 
him, and burst into sobs. “ Why have you kept 
me waiting so long ?” she cried. 

“Because I had other weightier matters on my 
mind,” he replied impatiently, pushing her away. 
“ I am grieved to have given you pain,” he added, 
relenting somewhat, “ but I came as soon as I 
could.” 

“ Oh, Lileo ! I had such an awful dream last 
night ! You remember when your people took our 
fortress. You remember how, when your soldiers 
were dragging my father by bis gray beard, I rushed 
in to plead for him. Then you remember how 
your men drove their swords through his body, how 
the blood gushed over me, and how I shrieked for 
help. Then you remember how you came in, and, 
as my father was dying, how he cast his glazed eyes 
upon me in horror, seeing you take me in your 
arms. 

“You remember how those dull eyes fixed them- 
selves upon me as if to blast me with a horrible 
curse, — a curse for me, the traitor and the par- 
ricide !” 

Here Callistano, overcome by her agony, flung 
herself once more on the neck of Lileo, sobbing 
like one gone mad. Yet Lileo, instead of comfort- 
ing her, visibly shuddered as she touched him, and 
65 


5 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


involuntarily pushed her away. Then she began 
her story once more. 

“ Last night I dreamed that I was wandering 
alone on the plains of the deserted moon. All its 
other people had perished, so that I was last of all. 
But by my side walked skeletons and sheeted ghosts. 
I dared not look behind, for I felt that phantoms 
were following me, and I dared not glance to my 
side, for I knew that spectres were my companions. 

“ Then I shut my eyes and cried aloud in terror 
for you. But a legion of demons seized me, as I 
shuddered and shrieked and struggled, bore me to a 
tomb and locked me there. 

“ Then in a blood-stained shroud I saw my father. 
Horror of horrors ! His dull glazed eyes fixed 
themselves upon me ! His flesh was cankered and 
corroded, his gray hair and beard were matted with 
coagulated blood, his crown had fallen from his 
brow, but his glassy eyes looked at me as when he 
died cursing me ! 

“ Then he arose from his coffin, threw his with- 
ered arms around me, drew my face to his clammy 
cheeks, and cried, ‘You are mine, you are mine! 
You must share your father’s doom at last ! Come, 
traitor ! come, parricide ! I will clasp you with me 
in my coffin forever !’ Then I shrieked and shrieked 
again, till I awoke. Oh, Lileo, Lileo, what agonies, 
what terrors, what horrors have I endured for your 
sake !” 

Then Callistano clasped his knees frantically and 
66 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


threw herself on the ground at his feet. This terri- 
ble outpouring of her love somewhat touched his 
selfish heart, so he drew her up to him, kissed her, 
and smoothed her hair. Yet she could feel that his 
love was assumed ; that he loathed her because she 
had betrayed her father for his sake; that he de- 
spised her as the seducer always despises the victim 
of his treachery. 

“ Oh, Lileo, Lileo !” she continued, “ my few peo- 
ple whom you have spared for slavery all hate me 
beyond expression. Dui'ing the last cold season, 
when so many hundreds died of hunger and cold, I 
hoped that they would all die too, so that they might 
cease to reproach me. But a few have lived, as you 
know, and as I pass them day by day they scowl at 
me and mutter curses. Only about three days ago 
I saw one hiding a dagger in his belt ; as I passed 
by he seized its hilt and crouched ready to spring 
upon me like a wild beast of the ancient times, 
but I turned and glared at him more fiercely than 
he at me. He shuddered as I stood before him with 
flashing eyes, then dropped his dagger and fled in 
terror !” 

The recreant lover could only stand silent, abashed 
and ashamed in the presence of this woman whom 
he had ruined. “ Yet,” she resumed, “ I could bear 
all, save for the shame with which your people and 
my own both have taunted me. Your mother and 
sisters shun me ; your people avoid my dwelling and 
speak of me in horrified whispers. My people often 
67 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


laugh aloud as I go by, reviling me as the traitorous 
creature of your lust.” 

Lileo reddened with shame, but still he could 
make no reply. 

“ Oh, Lileo,” she began again, “ for the sake of 
heaven, for the sake of our old-time love, for the 
sake of my lost purity, for the sake of my murdered 
father, honor me as your wedded wife ! Let me feel 
that in slaying my father and in betraying my people 
I have gained something in return. Let me feel that 
I have not cast away my honor and self-respect and 
happiness for nothing ! 

“ You know that in those days when the moon 
was at the height of its civilization all marriages 
had ceased, as the people were too enlightened to 
need idle forms and ceremonies and mummeries to 
make sacred the bonds of love. But our people 
have lost their godlike state, and marriage has be- 
come necessary again, as in primeval days, against 
the lust, the caprice and the infidelity of a degener- 
ated humanity. For this reason you should honor 
me with this ancient rite. Then I may cease to be 
a byword among the rabble. 

“ But, above all, for the sake of our unborn babe, 
avow me, confess me and vindicate me before these 
people ! Bemember that this babe, the last that 
shall ever be born upon the moon, is the offering, 
the sacrifice of my love for you ! Remember that 
in giving that babe to you I am bearing witness 
that my love for you is greater than that for 
68 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


father, for country, for hope, for honor, and for 
heaven !” 

Callistano sobbed so wildly that she swept all his 
reserve before her. She fell upon his neck again, and 
would not be thrust away. She embraced him, she 
kissed him, and she fondled him as a panther would 
her young. Lileo trembled and cowered before the 
fury of her terrific passion. He secretly feared this 
daughter of departed kings. He shuddered under 
her fervent embraces, but he dared not resist. 

“ Callistano,” he said, finally, as his cunning suc- 
ceeded his momentary fear, “ it shall be as you wish 
— some day. No, do not ask me more. Do not 
distrust me. It shall be as you wish.” 

IV. 

As the Princess Callistano wended her way alone 
through the outskirts of the ruined city, she sud- 
denly met Darus, the oldest of all the people of the 
moon. Darus was said to be over a hundred years 
old, and this was remarkable indeed, as life had at 
this period become shortened, and men rarely passed 
beyond the limit of sixty years. 

He was the last member of an almost forgotten 
race of men. His complexion was of a coppery 
brown, and his eyes were as brilliant as two black 
diamonds. He was a giant in stature, but was bent 
as a hopeless cripple, one leg much shorter than 
the other, dangling awkwardly, while his back was 
twisted pitifully. His long white hair hung over 
69 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


his shoulders, his shaggy eyebrows shaded his eyes, 
and his beard almost swept the ground. 

The black race had ceased to exist on the moon 
about twenty thousand years before, but the brown 
ancestors of Darus had continued to strive with the 
white men till a very recent period. They had, as 
savage tribes, led a precarious existence among the 
cliffs and crags, fightiDg the superior civilization, 
but wasting day by day. At last, after a terrible 
battle, their last stronghold had been taken, and all 
were put to the sword. But in a cave high among 
the cliffs a few were found who had starved to death 
during the long siege. Among those who had thus 
perished was the mother of Darus, and he, her babe, 
was found with his little brown mouth vainly seek- 
ing to draw nourishment from her cold and lifeless 
breast. The soldiers seized this last little brown 
babe, the relic of a perished humanity, and hurled 
him over the cliff. His leg was broken and his 
back was twisted, but fortunately he fell among 
soft hillocks of sand, and so was not killed ; the 
leader of the soldiers then took him and bred him 
as a slave. When he had grown older his mind 
became possessed of such wonderful powers as no 
one had ever believed the despised brown people 
capable. One day, by his knowledge of medicine, 
he saved his master’s life, and his skill was rewarded 
by freedom. From that time no man was regarded 
as his equal. Though now very old, his mind had 
lost nothing of its youthful brilliancy. 

70 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


He was justly reputed to be by far the wisest of 
all men living upon the moon. But not only was 
he wisest of all, but to Callistano he had always 
been kind while all the other people despised and 
reviled her. He never passed her without a good- 
natured smile and a word of comfort and cheer. 

He lived several leagues away, in the midst of 
the ruins of the great city. An immense marble 
palace, formerly the abode of a royal family, was 
now his home. Here he had a laboratory, where 
day and night he pursued the study of various 
sciences. 

Then he had a museum in which were to be 
found the skeletons, the fragments of bones, the 
skins and the stuffed remains of scores of animals 
now extinct, but which had once existed on the 
moon. There were in this museum the misshapen 
fishes, the serpents, the dragon-like bats, and the 
monsters of the deep which lived during the dawn 
of that world. Then there were gigantic figures 
like those of the mastodon and the mammoth which 
existed in later ages. Next were to be found still 
more recent animals, like the elephant, the lion and 
the tiger, reproduced so thoroughly that they seemed 
alive. Then again were to be seen the remains of 
the horse, which had become extinct at a compara- 
tively late day, almost in the memory of Darus 
himself. 

In a vast mansion of glass he had still kept alive 
through the terrific cold of the lunar nights numerous 

71 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


specimens of plants and flowers which had been extinct 
elsewhere for many generations. There were gorgeous 
roses, red and yellow and white as upon the earth, 
and one magnificent specimen whose blossoms were 
of a royal purple. There were immense lilies of all 
colors, scarlet, sky-blue, creamy, and pearly white. 
There were violets, like the modest young flowers 
of our early spring ; there were dandelions and 
forget-me-nots. 

Then there was an immense library, containing, it 
was said, over two millions of volumes, embracing 
most of the history and science and literature of the 
moon for more than forty thousand years. 

At this home the old man spent nearly all his 
time, rarely coming to visit the other people of that 
world. A small spring watered his garden, and 
thus enabled him and his plants to live. This 
green-house gathered enough warmth from the sun 
to supply him in all seasons with vegetables for 
his table, and at the same time kept the tempera- 
ture of his home comfortable during the fearful cold 
of the nights. 

Tradition averred that he was such a learned as- 
tronomer that he knew as much of the earth as he 
did of the moon ; that he had made several journeys 
to that world in a mysterious air-ship, and in past 
days had given astonishing accounts of the marvels 
of the neighboring planet. But for a long time he 
had said little to any one on any subject. 

It seemed to Callistano in some way that Darus 
72 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


was more than usually kind as he met her that day. 
He gazed upon the helpless outcast with such pity 
and compassion that her bitter heart yearned towards 
him. “ Daughter/’ he said, “sit down beside me.” 
Callistano seated herself, as he bade her, upon a 
prostrate marble column carved in the shape of a 
palm-tree. “Do you see,” he said, “those young 
people yonder ?” 

The princess looked to the spot at which he had 
pointed, and she beheld that which made her heart 
leap with fury, for there stood Lileo, her lover, 
holding the hand of Allanu, a beautiful maiden of 
his own nation. They were talking earnestly to- 
gether. After a time they kissed, and it was plain 
that they were lovers. 

Callistano and Darus were hidden from them by 
a ruined wall, through a crevice of which they could 
look without being seen. But the princess, infuri- 
ated beyond endurance, was about to leap from 
behind the wall, rush upon them, and revile them, 
had not Darus clutched her by the arm and implored 
her to be still. 

Allanu was a typical beauty of the later days of 
the moon. Callistano and Lileo were both some- 
what dark, but they belonged to a class which had 
long since almost ceased to exist among those 
people. 

Allanu, on the other hand, had that fair com- 
plexion which is peculiar to the northern climates 
of earth. Her eyes were of a pale blue, while her 
73 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


hair was of such a light golden tint that it seemed 
almost white. She was younger than the princess, 
and, though not so stately, was much sweeter aud 
gentler and lovelier. 

“ He is false to you,” said Darus, bluntly. 

“ Yes, it was for this that I became a traitor to 
my people, a murderer to my father, and a paramour 
to him,” hissed the princess, as her eyes flashed and 
her hand clutched the hilt of a hidden dagger. 

“Listen, my daughter,” said Darus, suddenly. 
“ I must tell you something, although it is at the 
risk of my own life. You have often heard, doubt- 
less, the legends of my journey to the earth, and 
probably, like many others, have disbelieved them 
all. But now I tell you that those stories are true. 
I have been to the earth three times during my life. 
I returned from my last journey a little more than 
twenty years ago.” 

By this time Lileo and Allanu had passed out of 
sight, and the princess was so amazed by this state- 
ment of Darus she forgot half her miseries. Darus 
after a pause then continued, — 

“ I cannot tell you how fruitful, how magnificent, 
how marvellous is the earth. It is at present in the 
same state that the moon was when it first became 
inhabited. 

“There are flowery fields and verdant forests, 
melodious with the songs of resplendent birds. 
There are oceans with waves as blue as sapphires, 
and with islands as green as emeralds. There are 
74 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


romantic lakes and magnificent rivers. There are 
skies as blue as the eyes of the angels, with clouds 
of white and crimson and purple and gold like the 
glorified city of the gods. There are vines loaded 
with luscious clusters of grapes and palm-trees bear- 
ing fruits and nuts. 

“ There are hyacinths and carnations and daisies 
and pansies growing wild, — in truth, all the beauti- 
ful creations of a youthful world, such as our half- 
forgotten poets have sung in the ancient days of the 
moon. 

“ Still, no people are living there. The mastodon 
and the mammoth, such as you have seen in my 
museum, are still upon the earth, but are fast be- 
coming extinct. The whole of the planet is habit- 
able, except the tiny white spots at the poles. Many 
epochs must pass before it grows too cold at the far 
north and south for human beings to live there. 
The earth, as you know, is much larger than the 
moon, and it should be peopled in the near future.” 

“ But what is all this to me ?” asked the princess, 
interested, yet surprised that he should have nar- 
rated these things to her. 

“ Would to heaven that it did not concern you, 
daughter !” he replied, with tears in his eyes. 

Then he came closer and laid his hand upon her 
head with deepest compassion. 

“ Listen to me, Callistano. You have endured 
such agonies that I am shuddering as I tell you of 
more fearful things to come. I have been at work 
75 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


for months on an air-ship which is soon to take 
every human being from this world to the earth, — 
all but you ! Lileo has given orders that you are to 
he left behind /” 

Callistano shrieked and sank into the arras of 
Darus. She threw her hands over her ears as if to 
keep back the story of her doom. 

“ Oh, heaven ! heaven !” she cried ; “ am I to be 
doomed to this horrible end?” Again, her passion 
taking another turn, she hissed fiercely at Darus, “ It 
is not true ! It is false ! it is false ! it is false ! Lileo 
could not be such a demon !” 

“ I swear it is true,” said the old man, almost 
sobbing. 

“ Oh, Father Darus !” cried Callistano, sinking upon 
her knees and grasping the old man’s hand, “ you, 
you will not leave me to this terrible fate ! Do not 
abandon me in this ruined world ! Think of its 
loneliness, its gloom, its silence, its ghosts, and its 
graves ! For the love of mercy, Father Darus, save 
me, save me !” 

“ Daughter,” he replied, weeping, “ Lileo has 
wearied of you. He is determined that you shall 
not go to the earth with us. He has forbidden 
any one to tell you this secret on pain of death. 
Even now I am in danger for having revealed so 
much. We could not conceal you in the ship, and, 
if we could, when we reached the earth he would 
slay you.” 

Again the princess shrieked with anguish and 
76 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


with terror, again she fell upon her knees and begged 
Darus to save her ; but he burst into sobs, tore him- 
self away, fled through the ruins, and left her alone. 
Then she wrung her hands in an extremity of grief, 
crying aloud to the heavens for help, but there came 
no answer. 

“ Oh, Lileo, Lileo ! v she cried, “ this is the reward 
for the love which has blasted my soul for your 
sake ! So you have now turned upon me, monster 
that you are ! Oh, what a doom is mine ! To live 
and die in this world of skeletons ; to tread with 
ghosts and ghouls of the night ; to wander through 
wrecks and ruins to the day of death ; to live among 
graves and coffins and shrouds ; to have no friends 
among the living, and to exist always among the 
dead ! Oh, father, father, thou art surely avenged ! 
Here am I to live in a tomb, among charnels and 
corpses, — in a dead world, alone !” 


V. 

The long night was now drawing to a close. The 
nights and days upon the moon continue a little 
longer than two weeks each, instead of twelve hours, 
as upon the earth ; besides, the sun there always 
rises in the west and sets in the east. However, at 
last the long period of darkness was about giving 
way to that morning which to all but Callistano 
would be the last upon the moon. 

Darus had so told her, and though every one else, 
including Lileo, had maintained a treacherous si- 
77 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


lence, she realized at last that the old man had 
indeed told her the fatal truth. Darns had further 
said to her that his air-ship must leave within one 
hour after sunrise, and that all must gather in it 
precisely by that time, else they would surely be 
left behind. 

He explained this by saying that in order to be 
enabled to steer his ship to the earth, the sun and 
the planets Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn should be 
beyond the earth, else the ship might be attracted 
from its course to another direction and whirled 
away in the abyss of space. Again, while the earth 
was directly between the moon and the sun, the ves- 
sel might be attracted to the earth with such force as 
to deprive Darus of the power of steering it prop- 
erly, and all would be dashed to pieces. 

“As it is now,” said Darus, “ for the first time in 
years past, and for the last time in years to come, all 
the greater planets are ranged upon the other side of 
the sun, so that w T e will not be attracted from the 
earth, which lies near the path towards the sun. 
At the same time, however, our path to the earth, 
being oblique, will not cast us to pieces there. So 
you see if we fail to leave except within an hour 
after sunrise, before these relative positions have 
changed, I could not for years to come successfully 
attempt the journey, and we would all perish on 
the moon.” 

He explained his theories much more carefully 
and in detail to the princess, but her mind was so 
78 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


burdened with grief that she paid little attention to 
his intricate reasoning. The one question with her 
was, “ What shall I do to avoid this doom?” Would 
she use persuasion ? No ; for she had begged for 
Lileo’s love upon her knees, and he had spurned her. 
She had dishonored herself to win that love, and had 
only gained his contempt. Would she use force? 
No ; for the hundred men and women still living 
upon the moon were her enemies, and would easily 
overcome any effort she might make. Would she 
conceal herself in the air-ship, and thus steal her 
way ? No ; for Darus had told her that concealment 
would be impossible; and, even if she could hide 
there, her enemies would slay her when she had 
reached the earth. Would she poison Lileo and 
then slay herself? No ; the punishment would be 
too trifling for such a perfidious wretch. At last, 
after long agonizing, sleepless hours, she determined 
upon a plan which she set about to fulfil. 

Lileo had come, at her request, to see her that 
night, and in less than ten hours he was to abandon 
her forever. She had sent message after message, 
of the most urgent nature, before he had promised 
to come. During that long, long night, lasting 
nearly half a month, she had gone out time and 
again to look at the earth with a great mysterious 
yearning. She would gaze upon its immense orb, 
thirteen times larger than the face of the moon, 
and wonder where on its surface the home of the 
lunar emigrants would be. Its poles were of a 
79 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


dazzling white, its seas of a dull gray-blue, and its 
continents and islands of a pale, delicate green. 
Those seas and those continents had names to her 
which would have sounded strange and unfamiliar 
to us. She could see the vast continent of Asia, 
twice the size of the face of the moon as it seems to 
us, and Africa, shaped like the great heart of a lion, 
while the small continent of Europe was dimly 
hovering in the northwest. Then, as the earth hung 
there without changing its position in the lunar sky, 
it continued revolving on its own axis till Asia dis- 
appeared, when the dark Atlantic was revealed to 
her gaze, and then North America, like a tattered fig- 
leaf, about the size of the moon as she seems to us, 
connected with South America, which extended far 
down towards the Antarctic pole. Then, as these 
passed by, Australia, a bright spot in the great blue 
Pacific, appeared, and once again she saw the coast 
of Asia. The earth was like a revolving clock, 
upon which she could count the passing of the hours, 
the time of the night. The stars shone through the 
pure and rarefied atmosphere of the moon, far keener 
and more dazzling than they appear to the people 
of the earth. 

But the earth, without materially changing its 
place, yet revolving over and over again, had waned 
into a crescent. Then Lileo had come, and they 
were together for the last time. They were spend- 
ing these hours at Callistano’s palace, an old build iug 
of stone, half in ruins. It was delightfully warm 
80 


/ 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 

there on this chilly night, being near the crater and 
heated by iron pipes which were sunk far down into 
the depths of that furnace, and extended to every 
room of the house. 

They were lying upon a magnificent couch, which 
had been among the spoils of war wrested from 
Callistauo’s old home when her people were con- 
quered. It was of solid gold, carved in the shape 
of an immense shell frosted with pearls, and borne 
on the back of two fishes. There were scattered 
over it rich scarfs and coverings woven of the 
many-colored plumes of birds which had perished 
in the poetic days of the past. As the climate of 
the moon had grown colder and colder during the 
nights, the gorgeous birds of the tropics had flocked 
together by myriads in the small warm valleys, and 
had perished in immense numbers, or had been slain 
w 7 ith ease by the inhabitants. In those times these 
wonderful fabrics had been wrought. The various 
colors of the feathers, blended together in richest 
confusion, shimmered and scintillated in the light 
with metallic splendor. 

The pillows were made of the web of a spider, 
now extinct also, and were softer and lighter and 
more delicate than the finest silk. The carpets 
were woven of glittering threads of silver and 
copper, while the rugs were the great, white shaggy 
skins of the hardy race of dogs still living upon 
the moon. Scattered about the room were orna- 
mental statues of rock crystal. 

81 


6 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


“ Come,” said Callistano, strangely gay and reck- 
less on such a fearful night, “ come and have a glass 
of wine with me.” 

Lileo, wary as traitors always are, at first de- 
clined, saying that he must leave at once, and that 
he had already stayed too long. But Callistano 
would accept no refusal. 

“ This wine,” she said, “ has a most wonderful 
history. It has descended through my ancestors 
from times of tradition, and though ages old, never 
loses its superb qualities. 

“ Fifty thousand years ago, so long ago that even 
Darns has no authentic history of the time, there 
reigned the great Queen Nolasca, a heroine who led 
her armies in battle to victory seven hundred times, 
and who conquered all the kingdoms of the moon. 

“She was so proud, so stately, that all people 
stood in awe of her, and so that she who ruled over 
the whole of this world could not win the love of a 
single man. 

“ But as she was riding one day along a lonely high- 
way in one of her remote provinces, accompanied by 
a train of noblemen, she spied a shepherd-boy play- 
ing a rustic flute as he tended a flock of sheep. 

“ He was meanly clad, but was so beautiful, with 
his black curly hair, his dreamy brown eyes, his 
sunburned brow, his red cheeks, and his ‘graceful 
bare feet, that she fell madly in love with him. 

“ She carried him to her palace and sought to win 
his love in return. In vain, for he sighed for the 
82 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


simple young peasant-girl at his far-away home, to 
whom he had promised to be true. 

“ He and his country sweetheart had d)een very, 
very happy together, but here in the midst of the 
pomp and revel of the court he saw nothing that 
seemed friendly or familiar. Even the heavens them- 
selves were different, for his rugged native province 
was on the other side of the moon, and he had never 
before seen the earth arising in silvery splendor^ 
making night almost like day and robbing him of 
sleep. 

“So Nolasca sent for an aged hermit, who was 
said to know the secret of life and death, and who 
had power over the emotions of hatred and love. 
When she bad told him her sorrows, and begged for 
a potion by which the foolish boy might be made to 
give her his love, he told her to send to the far-away 
province whence the lad bad come, and secretly steal 
tbe peasant maiden whom he loved. 

“ The queen so commanded, and the peasant girl 
was brought before her. 

“ ‘ Now/ said the old hermit, 1 slay her with your 
own hands, dig a grave for her with your own dag- 
ger at the foot of yonder vine, and bury her there, 
so that when the clusters of grapes shall hang there 
in the autumn they will be enriched with her blood. 
Then you shall take the wine pressed from those 
grapes, and it will be a potion which will unite you 
and your shepherd youth in love and in life and in 
death forever.’ 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


“ The queen was horrified, but such was her ter- 
rible love for the youth that she determined to obey. 
So she dragged the barefooted peasant girl to the 
garden, stabbed her, dug the grave with her own 
dagger at the foot of the' gigantic vine, and buried 
the maiden with her own hands. 

“ As the autumn came the vine was loaded with 
such magnificent clusters as no man had ever seen 
before, but instead of being white, as before, the 
clusters had become purple. 

“ Then Nolasca gave a splendid banquet, and the 
wine was brought forth in a great cask of silver. 
The queen offered the drink to the shepherd boy in 
a magnificent goblet cut from a single marvellous 
diamond, the largest ever beheld upon the moon. 
As she raised it on high it glittered and glimmered 
like the sun arising in ruby-colored clouds. Then 
the shepherd boy and all the other guests, ignorant 
of the crime which had been perpetrated, drank the 
wine, when lo ! the magic draught had the same 
effect upon all. 

“ The hundred noblemen at the banquet, as well 
as the lad, became fiercely in love with the great queen, 
and all felt a terrible yearning for her. Then, as 
they drank more and more, all became frenzied. 

“ Nolasca and the shepherd lad rushed madly into 
each other’s arms. Then arose a fearful uproar 
among the other lovers of the queen. There was a 
terrible clashing of swords as they all ran forward 
to slay the one of whom they were all jealous. 

84 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 

“ The queen wildly sought to defend him, but she 
who had conquered all the kingdoms of the moon, 
who had led a million soldiers to victory against the 
foe, could not save herself from her lovers. She 
threw herself before the lad, but a knight rushed 
toward them, thrust his sword through both, and 
fastened them together forever. 

“ Then the people, enraged at the death of their 
queen, slew all the noblemen, hewed down the 
vine, and sought to destroy the cask of wine, but 
a faithful servant saved it ; so it has been kept in 
our ancestral line for ages. 

“ Time has no weakening effect upon it, and when 
in the course of different ages we . have brought it 
out to our guests, the legend runs that whosoever 
drinks it with another shall be united with the other 
in love and in life and in death forever.” 

Lileo feared to take the drink ; he shuddered at 
the recital of this legend, half believing it. He 
surely did not wish to be united with Callistano 
in any way. He had already stayed too long. He 
must return and make ready to leave with Darus. 
However, Callistano was so urgent that he finally 
yielded, and brushed away his fears. 

Then Callistano offered him the drink in a great 
goblet of crystal. While she doubted the truth of 
the legend, she knew that the wine was the strongest 
ever trod from the press ; that a tiny portion, such 
as might fill the palm of one’s hand, would be 
enough for an ordinary man, but that this goblet 
85 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


would be enough to overcome a giant with ten times 
the strength of Lileo ; it would set his heart on fire, 
send his brain whirling in a frenzied delirium, and 
finally hurl him down as a bull is smitten by a blow 
from a battle-axe. 

The wine was of a gorgeous purple, and sparkled 
and bubbled and scintillated over the brim. It was 
delightful to the taste and breathed a delicious per- 
fume. 

When quaffing the goblet Lileo seemed to be 
treading among the vine-clad hill-sides of the beau- 
tiful traditional days of the far-away past. He in- 
haled the fragrance of flowers that had perished fifty 
thousand years before, and heard the peerless songs 
of birds that had now forever passed into the poetic 
realms of fancy and of fable. 

He seemed to behold the great queen Nolasca 
riding upon a milk-white steed caparisoned with 
jewels, amid the sound of martial music, preceded 
by silken banners, and followed by a glittering 
forest of moving swords and spears. 

He seemed to see the beautiful shepherd boy ; he 
hearkened to the melodies of his magic flute ; he 
saw the silken flocks amid the flower-starred mead- 
ows, the barefooted peasant maiden, and then he 
beheld the gigantic vine whose mighty limbs seemed 
to overspread the skies with a forest of green leaves 
and a wilderness of purple clusters. 

But after he had quaffed the goblet he felt the 
awful passion of the departed heroine. His veins 
86 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


seemed to run liquid fire, his eyes were ablaze, and 
his heart leaped in his bosom like a tiger fierce for 
blood. He loved Callistano so terribly that his very 
soul seemed ready to bound forth and devour hers. 
He hungered, he thirsted, he panted for love, love, 
love ! He seized her in his arms, hurled kiss after 
kiss upon her mouth, her cheeks, her brow, her eye- 
lids, her hands, and her feet. 

He embraced her again and again with such fero- 
cious ardor that she screamed and almost fainted 
with terror. She sought to resist him as a woman 
will at first ; but, frenzied and infuriated, he seized 
her by the hair, hurled her upon the couch again, 
and fettered his loved one with fearful, passionate 
embraces. 

Like a lion as he seeks some desert lioness, he 
wooed her with blows, with stifling caresses, and with 
clutches of hands like steel. Then in a delicious 
trance of voluptuous bliss they fainted away together. 

Callistano, who had drunk none of the wine, soon 
recovered, but Lileo sank into a profound sleep, — a 
sleep so profound that it seemed as if he would 
never awake. Then the princess went to the door 
and gazed out upon the night. It was only two or 
three hours before dawn, and the earth, in the form 
of a jagged crescent, was slowly waning in the sky. 
The princess gazed over the vast ruins of the ancient 
city. The shattered columns, the porticos, the arches 
and the towers seemed in the white light of the 
earth a vast array of ghosts. 

87 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 

“ In a few hours,” she whispered, “ Darus and 
his crew will leave this world forever. They are 
now waiting impatiently for Lileo, leagues away at 
the home of Darus in the heart of yonder ruined 
city, but he will never come, and at the last moment 
they will be forced to give him up in despair. Then 
they will leave us two to die in this desolate world 
together ! Thank heaven, he still sleeps, and will 
continue to sleep till it is too late, too late !” 

Then she returned to where Lileo lay asleep. 
She gazed at him with mingled angelic love and 
diabolic hatred. She adored him, but she hated 
him as the sparrow hates the serpent which has 
charmed him, as the victim of some evil habit hates 
the drug which has fettered his body and soul, as 
a mother hates the first-born son who drives a 
dagger into her bosom. 

Yes, there he slept, her grand young giant, her 
traitor lover, her precious murderer, her darling 
villain, her bitter and her sweet, her night and her 
day, her dearest and her vilest enemy ! In her 
heart Hate and Love were the pursuer and the pur- 
sued ; they were the eagle and the dove, the lion 
and the lamb, the panther and the fawn. 

She wept passionately above him ; she kissed his 
hands over and over again ; she wet his garments 
with her tears. 

He was so strong, so proud, so handsome ! How 
beautiful were the black curls upon his forehead ! 
How Godlike was the grandeur of his great bare 
88 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


limbs, how splendid the rugged outlines of his naked 
feet ! Then she dragged herself away once more to 
gaze upon the outer world. 

The sun was just rising, without the blush of 
dawn, the songs of birds, the diamond dews, the 
silken clouds and the mellow skies, as of old, but 
in a heaven of ebony, over a world of cliffs and 
crags and ruins, which flashed through the dark- 
ness like arctic mountains of ice and snow. 

Fully an hour passed, and then Callistano was 
suddenly aroused by an exclamation from Lileo 
within. She came before him trembling, and saw 
in an instant that on being roused he had come to 
himself again; that he despised her as before; was 
furious at her for beguiling him to sleep, and be- 
side himself with terror at the prospect of being 
left behind. 

“What does this mean?” he cried; “what is the 
time?” 

Callistano, on being spoken to in this furious 
tone, recovered all her courage, and, assuming an 
air of triumph, shouted, “You sought to betray 
me and I have betrayed you ! Darns and all your 
people have left by this time, and you shall die 
here with me as a reward for your perfidy !” 

Lileo uttered a cry of anguish and rushed to the 
door. The sight there made his heart stand still 
and his veins congeal like ice. 

For' lo ! far away in the sky he saw the air-ship 
89 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


flying away forever from the moon ! Yes, the air- 
ship, fashioned like a long, lithe sword-fish, with a 
pointed prow, delicate fins of steel, and a rudder 
like a waving tail ! Away, away it went, cleaving 
the sky as the sword-fish cleaves the sea ! It was- 
leagues away, and they would never hear him ! He 
shrieked, he yelled, he shouted, but the vessel grew 
fainter and fainter in the sky ! Then he dashed 
back to the room, seized an immense trumpet, and, 
rushing out of the palace to the summit of a crag,, 
blew upon it to attract the attention of his de- 
parting comrades. Far, far away, through the 
mountains, the ravines, the crags, the deserts and 
the ruined palaces the great trumpet aroused the 
startled echoes of that rarefied atmosphere, till it 
seemed that the angel Gabriel was coming to herald 
the day of judgment. He blew with such terrible 
force that the blood oozed from his lips, his eyes 
and his nostrils. But all in vain ! No one in that 
ship, far above the moon’s atmosphere, could hear a 
note of that terrible trumpet, and if they could, it 
would have been too late to return ! 

Then he dashed the trumpet to pieces, and turned 
like a leopard on Callistano. But she was more 
than his equal. “ You may kill me,” she cried,, 
“ but then you will be alone in this terrible world \’ r 
The hand which Lileo had raised to strike her fell 
powerless at his side when he thought with horror 
of living alone, as her murderer, in the great deso- 
late realms of the moon. 


90 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


Then she began to laugh with a frantic joy, and 
he saw that he was alone with a maniac ! “ Ha ! 

ha !” she cried, “ you sought to play a harmless 
little jest upon me, and I have played a harmless 
little jest upon you ! Come, let us be lovers as in 
olden times !” Then she covered his face with 
loathsome kisses ; then she threw her arms around 
him and petted him as though he were a little 
child. 

Yet Lileo did not resist her. He hung like a 
block of lead in her arms. Once more the blood 
began to trickle from his mouth, his nostrils and 
his eyes; then it began to ooze from his ears; 
then his breathing became almost imperceptible; 
the thin atmosphere of the moon had at last become 
fatal, and he died as though he had been strangled. 

Callistano gazed upon her victim with the dull 
blank amazement of a lunatic. Though mad, she 
realized at last that she was alone upon the moon t 
Yes, alone, alone, alone ! In a great world thou- 
sands of miles from any other planet, swinging 
blindly with it through the black abyss of unending 
space; in a land of deserts, in a realm of ghosts, 
in a kingdom of tombs. In the dust at her feet 
were the remains of millions of people ; there were 
emperors and kings and queens and warriors and 
peasants and beggars ; there were the old and the 
young, the good and the bad ; there were lovers and 
there were enemies, but all were silent in their 
shrouds forever. Never again would she hear the 
91 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 


laughter or the sighs, or see the smiles or the tears 
of another human being. 

She knelt above him; she felt his pulse, but it 
was still ; she clasped his feet in her hands, but 
they were rigid and cold. Over her beautiful bare 
white bosom his blood had trickled and congealed. 
She sought to warm his feet upon that lovely warm 
breast, but they remained as cold as ice ; she wiped 
the blood from his face with her hair, but he gave 
no answer ; she sought to revive his speech with her 
caresses, but his mouth was dumb forever. 

Then in a dim, dazed manner she realized still 
more her own utter despair. She did not cry out, 
but knelt above him as though she were a woman 
of stone. 

Slowly, slowly the sun rose higher, and she did 
not move. The bare crags loomed like towers of 
fire and the splendid ruins arose from the darkness 
like immense tombs. 

Callistano never moved again. 

There her lover lies to this time, and there she 
bends above him still, after the lapse of thousands 
of years. The sun arises over that ruined world as 
of old in a sky of ebony sprinkled with stars ; his 
first beams light the haggard faces of those lovers, 
who are now shrivelled and wrinkled away ; his 
last rays fall in pity on those mummied figures 
with their * withered lips and their sightless eyes. 
They keep vigil through the long bleak night of the 

92 


t 


THE JUDGMENT DAY OF THE MOON 

moon together, and the great earth waxes and wanes 
and wraps them in its garment of snow-white 
splendor. 

Then with their withered lips and their sightless 
eyes they seem to salute the sun as he rises again 
over their desolate world, — the two lovers who re- 
main as mute memorials of the Judgment Day of 
the Moon. 


93 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE. 


I. 

Early one morning in September, a lonely horse- 
man was riding along one of the country lanes in 
West Tennessee, a few miles south of Memphis. 

Thirty years before he had left this country for 
New York, and he was now revisiting for the first 
and last time these scenes of his childhood and 
youth. 

In those far-distant days he had been only a poor 
country boy ; he now returned a man of immense 
wealth. His mind wandered back to those by-gone 
times, and his heart was filled with bitterness. 

Richard Wolcott had then been cruelly dealt with ; 
but the time for his revenge had come at last, after 
the flight of all those weary years. 

He thought of little Ellen Hamlin, his first and 
last sweetheart, who lived at her old country home 
adjoining the place where he was born. In a few 
hours he was to be at her home again and was to 
speak to her face to face. 

His heart sank within him as he thought of those 
yester-years when she was true to him, and they 
were the happiest lovers in the world. 

94 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


Then he thought, with shame and humiliation, of 
her wedding night, after she had foolishly allowed 
her parents to persuade her to marry another man. 
He would not then believe it till he saw her himself. 

He remembered her white bridal veil, the white 
bridal blossoms in her brown hair, the gathering 
guests, the congratulations of her friends, the throb- 
bing of the music, keeping time to the throbbing of 
his own aching heart. Then he remembered his 
rage and his disgust when Jack Harrison, his rival, 
sauntered up to lead her to the altar. 

Then he remembered the night he left this hated 
country for New York, how he boarded the train 
amid the shouts of hack-drivers and expressmen, 
alone and unbefriended, to seek his fortune as a 
stranger in a great city. 

Then he thought with exultation of his marvellous 
success, and how that success had now enabled him 
to have his revenge. 


II. 

Richard had indeed cause to be proud of his 
financial career in New York. Rarely had he been 
unsuccessful in his many speculations. Clear-headed 
and keen-witted, he never allowed sentiment to be- 
cloud his calculations. 

He had never married. People said he was in- 
capable of loving anything, and were often heard to 
remark in somewhat hackneyed phrase that “ that 
fellow Dick Wolcott is as cold as a wedge.” 

95 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


On the other hand, Jack and Ellen had met with 
misfortune after misfortune. 

Their families had both been wealthy country 
people of the old aristocratic Southern type. But 
hard times had succeeded hard times over and over 
again. Luxury after luxury had been given up. 
Necessity after necessity had been taken away. 
Large debts had succeeded small debts. Peter had 
been robbed so often to pay Paul that Peter had at 
last revolted. Opulence had been followed by gen- 
tility, gentility by respectability, respectability by 
shabbiness, and shabbiness by absolute poverty. 
The old farm had gone to waste ; the fields were full 
of gullies; the fences were rotting, and the gates 
were swagging on their rusty hinges. The horses 
had been starved to death, the mules had grown 
bony and spiritless, while the negroes, falling deeper 
and deeper into debt, had lost all incentive to effort 
and become lazy and worthless and improvident. 

A mortgage had been given on the home place to 
a Memphis merchant to secure a debt of five thou- 
sand dollars ; this merchant being in failing circum- 
stances, and being indebted to Wolcott’s New York 
firm, had transferred the note and the mortgage 
securing it to Wolcott himself. 

The note was now overdue, and there was not the 
slightest prospect of payment. 

Richard was right: the day of reckoning had 
come at last after thirty long years. 


96 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


III. 

As Wolcott that morning rode along the country 
lane, gray-haired and proud and handsome, mounted 
on his spirited coal black horse, he was, indeed, a 
striking figure. As he wended his way by the 
straggling fences, the dilapidated barns, the white- 
washed, sallow-hued farm-houses or the sedge-grown, 
gully-scarred fields, he seemed the embodiment of 
the highest worldly prosperity amid the dreariest 
environments of worldly poverty. 

Everything around him was changed. Here was 
the same old landscape he had known in his boy- 
hood, but how much older and drearier it seemed to 
have grown ! 

Only upon this morning in the early autumn he 
saw, as in vanished years, the frail trumpets of the 
fading morning glories, the dewy blossoms of the 
datura, the decaying sprays of the “ lady-fingers,” 
the buzzard floating leisurely far away in the skies, 
and he heard the chirp of the cricket in the wither- 
ing grass by the wayside. At last he passed the old 
Methodist church and its graveyard. The house 
of worship was standing there still, as it had stood 
thirty years ago, when he and Ellen had gone to 
Sunday-school together, when he, in his boyish 
fancy, had dreamed a thousand times of the blissful 
night when he was to lead her, his own dear little 
bride, to its altar. And there was the old grave- 
yard still, but more dreary and more desolate than 
97 


7 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


in days of old. The ancient head-stones were all 
fallen or hanging sideways, and mosses and lichens 
had covered their youthful whiteness, while the suns 
of summer, the rains of autumn, and the blasts of 
winter had worn away their epitaphs which once 
spoke so sweetly of hope, of heaven, of the goodness 
of those who slept beneath, and of the heart-break of 
their loved ones left behind. 

Then Richard’s heart sank with despondency. 
He knew that nearly all the old friends of his early 
days were lying over there. He knew that all the 
young faces which shone on the wedding night of 
Ellen Hamlin and Jack Harrison were either far 
removed to distant places, scattered over the earth in 
unknown scenes, or were sleeping here in this deso- 
late old church-yard. 

He had declared that he would be avenged upon 
Ellen, but the bright eyes which had beheld his dis- 
comfiture were now faded ; the busy tongues that 
had babbled about his misfortune were silenced; 
the lips that had laughed over his misery had now 
become dust. Not one of the old friends would be 
here to witness his triumph. 

He felt like crying out to them, “ Come, come, 
old friends ! Come back, come back, Jenny and 
Mary and Emma and John and Robert and Tom ! 
Come back, come back, old friends, from your dusty 
coffins and your mildewed shrouds ! Come, and 
you, who saw my shame and degradation, shall 
now see my triumph ! I am rich, I am worth 
98 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


millions of dollars. Come back, and I will give 
you all my millions to have you with me for one 
short hour !” 

But he knew there was no use crying out. All 
the millions of money in the world could not bring 
back one of the many sleepers there. The old slant- 
ing head-stones, like gray-bearded dwarfs, seemed to 
turn mockingly towards him with dumb lips of 
stone. 

Then, as he rode along farther, he thought over 
and over again of all the provisions of his mortgage. 
He had read it so often that he knew every word of 
it by heart. 

It began, “ Know all men by these presents,” 
and, after stating the amount of the debt secured 
described the old farm upon which it was given. 
Of course, the description was couched in legal 
phraseology, — intricate, perplexing, and confusing, 
— but amid the dense undergrowth of technical 
terms there could be no doubt of the exact locality. 
It was the old farm upon which Ellen was born, 
upon which she had run when a little bareheaded, 
barefooted country girl, upon which she grew to 
womanhood, upon which he had picked blackber- 
ries and hunted partridge-nests with her, through 
which ran the old creek in which he had gone swim- 
ming with her brothers, amid which stood her old 
home, where he had courted her in his boyish way, 
and where she had returned his love. It was the 
same place where she had married another and where 
99 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


her father and mother had died. It had been given 
her by her father as a bridal present when she mar- 
ried Jack. 

The description in the mortgage, however, was 
about as follows : “ A certain tract or parcel of land, 
situated in the Twelfth Civil District of the County 
of Shelby, State of Tennessee, and more particularly 
described as follows, to wit : Six hundred and forty 
acres, more or less, beginning at J. T. Jones’s north- 
west corner, with sweet-gum and dogwood pointers ; 
thence south eighty chains to a water oak marked 
X ; then east eighty chains to a poplar in the north- 
west corner of Widow Smith’s dower ; thence north 
eighty chains to a stake in the middle of a public 
road; thence west eighty chains to beginning; 
being the same realty conveyed by Jeremiah Hamlin 
to Ellen Harrison by deed recorded in Book 14, 
page 792 of the Register’s office of Shelby County, 
Tennessee.” Then followed a clause like this : “ To 
have and to hold unto the party of the second part, 
with all the appurtenances thereunto belonging, his 
heirs and assigns forever.” 

“ With all the appurtenances thereunto belong- 
ing.” That meant the old homestead itself, where 
she was born, and where she first told him that she 
loved him ; that meant the old logwood stile, where 
she had given him her first kiss. 

Oh, those dry legal phrases ! What emotions, what 
memories, what hallowed scenes, what joys, what 
heart-breaks are concealed in their grim old terms ! 

100 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


After travelling a little farther, he met a farmer 
riding upon a woe-begone old mare. Richard asked 
the man if he knew Mrs. Ellen Harrison. “Ok, 
yes,” replied the farmer ; “ she and her family have 
been living over yonder for more than forty years.” 
Then in response to Richard’s question as to her 
standing in the community, he replied, — 

“ She is one of the best women in this neighbor- 
hood, and one of the foremost in everything. She 
is president of the Missionary Society, she is secre- 
tary and treasurer of our Pastor’s Aid Society, she 
is one of the best members of our church, and I’ve 
often heard her pray in public.” 

“Stuff!” growled Richard to himself, as he rode 
along; “it is strange, indeed, how these women, 
after leading §uch heartless lives, when they become 
old and incapable of doing further harm, pretend at 
last to be saints.” 


IV. 

At last he reached the old homestead itself ; but 
how changed it was ! He saw at a glance the rot- 
ting fences, the dilapidated out-houses, the battered 
barn, the s wagging gates, and the dull, white-washed 
walls of the old farm-house. Nothing could be 
more lonesome and dreary and desolate. 

The sun, now near the meridian, shone with a 
sickly glare upon the faded morning glories climb- 
ing over the porch. Dismounting from his horse, 
he stepped up the rickety stairs, and after knocking 
101 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


at the door, was admitted into the front room by a 
slovenly negro wench. This was evidently the best 
room of the house, and he recognized it as the 
old parlor of by-gone days, where he had spent so 
many happy, happy hours when courting Ellen. 
But it only resembled the old parlor as the stale, 
disgusting scenes of morning to the inflamed eyes 
of a wakened drunkard resemble his frenzied visions 
of the vanished midnight revel. The plaster was 
cracking and falling from the ceiling; the carpet 
was ragged, the chairs were rickety, the sofa was 
covered with patches and threadbare rents; there 
were no ornaments except a battered piano, some 
tawdry artificial flowers on the mantel, and a few 
cheap chromos hung on the walls. 

Then the door opened, and a woman entered. 
Great God ! could it be Ellen ? Yes, it was she ; 
but how different from her pretty self of the olden 
times! Her bright eyes had now become a dull, 
lack-lustre gray ; her soft, peachy cheeks had become 
sallow and bony ; she wore false teeth, and steel 
spectacles surmounted a nose grown as thin and as 
sharp as a hatchet. 

“ Dick, Dick !” she faltered, “ is it you ?” 

To this question he replied nothing; but he in- 
wardly muttered to himself, “ Is this my beautiful 
little Ellen of by-gone days? Is this the woman 
for whose sake my whole life has been blasted and 
blighted and desolated ?” 


102 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


V. 

After they had talked together awhile on old-time 
matters, Ellen said to him, — 

“ Well, Dick, I suppose you have come to see 
about the mortgage ?” 

“ Yes,” he replied ; “ are you ready to pay ?” 

“ No,” she answered, with a half-suppressed sigh, 
“ no, Dick, I haven’t a cent to give you. I wish very 
much that I could pay you, since you have been 
such a kind creditor, but we have been very unfor- 
tunate. Jack is away to-day, but if he were here, 
he could tell you better than I how we have strug- 
gled to pay that debt, and how we have failed.” 

“ I suppose,” Dick replied, attempting to be cyn- 
ical, “ that you will probably try to avoid paying 
it by an injunction, or some such legal proceeding?” 

Then she looked at him with such an expression 
of surprise and reproachfulness that his heart sunk 
withiu him. 

“ No, Dick,” she said, “ there would not be the 
slightest chance of defeating that mortgage in the 
courts ; but if there were such a chance I would 
not try to deprive you of your rights. It is an 
honest debt and ought to be paid.’ ’ 

“ I beg your pardon, Ellen,” he answered ; “ I did 
not mean to hurt your feelings.” 

“ Of course you will have to sell the place,” she 
continued. “ That is very hard on us, and God 
only knows what will become of us then. But 
103 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


you are perfectly right, Dick, and I do not blame 
you.” 

“ Then, if that is the case, I will have it adver- 
tised for sale in thirty days.” 

“ Yes, Dick, I see no other way for you to do.” 

Richard had been looking forward to this time 
for thirty years ; yet, somehow there was not the 
feeling of exultation and triumph in his heart which 
he had expected. Revenge was not so sweet after 
all. For she was so meek, so anxious to pay the 
debt, even though it broke her heart, that he almost 
felt as if he could pity her. 

“You must not think that this bears so hard 
upon me,” she said, after a pause, “ because you 
know, Dick, a farmer’s wife has to undergo many 
trials, — so many that at last she gets used to them. 
For a long time I have done my own cooking and 
ironing, and at times, when we were unusually hard 
pressed, I have done my own washing.” 

“ Heavens !” he thought to himself ; “ no wonder 
that she has no time to beautify this old house. I 
am only astonished to think that she has kept it as 
well as she has.” 

“ You know, Dick,” she began again, “ that it has 
been very hard to keep the interest paid. For a long 
time I have been selling butter and eggs and milk. 
In this way I have realized enough to keep it down. 
But last spring one of our cows died, and during this 
summer I have had very bad luck with my chickens, 
for I was not able to raise many of them.” 

104 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


For the first time in his life Richard felt himself 
a coward, — yes, a mean, contemptible, sneaking 
coward ; for here he was, a man worth millions, 
crushing to the earth a poor little old woman who 
sold butter and eggs and milk that he might have 
his miserable usury ! 

Then he looked at her hands. Poor little old 
wrinkled hands, coarse and rough and brown ! How 
different they were from the dear little soft hands she 
had when she was young ! 

Then he remembered how, when they were lovers, 
he first held her hand. He had been making love 
to her for a long time before that, and, although he 
believed his affection had been returned, she had 
always repulsed him when he tried to hold her 
hand. But on that particular night in midwinter 
they were coming home from church together, and 
as they walked along he noticed that she had lost 
one of her gloves. 

“ It is very cold to-night,” he said. 

“ Yes, dreadfully cold,” she replied. 

“ You had better put your hand in my overcoat 
pocket, where it will keep warm,” he answered in turn. 

“ Oh, no, for I see you have lost your glove, too, 
and I wouldn’t deprive you of the use of your 
pocket.” 

“Ob, that’s all right, Ellen ; my hands are stout 
and strong and don’t need it.” 

Then her little hand slipped down into his warm 
overcoat pocket. 


105 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


“ Goodness gracious !” she said, “‘your pocket is; 
so big that my hand seems lost in it.” 

“ Yes, and my hand is getting cold on the out- 
side,” he replied. 

Then it was the most natural thing in the world 
for him to forget himself and put his hand in that 
pocket too. Then her little hand struggled to be 
free from his, and trembled and palpitated like a 
tiny bird in a snare ; but it was powerless to free 
itself. 

“Oh, well,” she said, “as you are so much 
stronger than I am, I suppose I can’t help myself 
but I think it’s real mean of you.” 

Yet, strange to say, when a few moments after r 
he loosened his death-like grip, her small hand did 
not try to free itself, but the sweet little fingers; 
twined lovingly into his. 

And now, after all these years, he could not help 
saying in his heart, “Poor little withered brown 
hands ! what a brave battle they have fought against 
a heartless world ! They have cooked, the) 7- have 
ironed, they have washed clothes, they have knitted, 
stockings for restless little feet, they have raised 
chickens and sold butter and eggs and milk, and 
yet they have been baffled ! For years they have- 
fought against this monstrous debt, which is to me- 
a mere trifle, but which is a giant sum to them 
and fighting that they have become ugly and wrin- 
kled and brown.” 

Ugly did you say, Dick Wolcott? No, not that - 
106 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 

you know that when you looked at those poor little 
wrinkled hands they seemed more beautiful to you 
than they were when first you held them, a blissful 
young lover, in your own long, long ngo ! 

Then she began again, as if to make him feel more 
mean and contemptible than ever, although he knew 
she did not intend it that way. 

“ Dick, do you know why it was that last year’s 
interest was not paid? I hate to tell you, but I 
must, for I want you to know that I have not been 
unmindful of the debt I owe you. Well, our oldest 
son, Tom, a bright, noble boy, was sent to college 
by us, after a great deal of economizing ; but while 
there he got into bad company. He drank and 
played cards. You mustn’t be too hard on Tom, 
Dick, for he was a noble boy. His fault was 
thoughtlessness. Then matters went on from bad 
to worse, till — till — Tom went wrong. I had saved 
about a hundred dollars, and I sent that to pay him 
out, so that he might not be disgraced. That is 
why that interest was not paid.” 

“ My God !” thought Richard to himself, “ will 
this woman have no mercy upon me? What have 
I to do with her son’s troubles ? Am I to blame 
for them ? Why annoy me with them ?” 

Richard was merely doing as Cain had done 
thousands of years before, saying, “ Am I my 
brother’s keeper?” when he knew all the time that 
the answer was, “ Yes. v 

But still she seemed to have no mercy upon him ; 

107 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


still she continued the story of her struggle against 
the world. 

“Well, then, Dick, you know that this year’s 
interest, too, remains unpaid ; we had hoped to set- 
tle that, but the crops last year, through the drought, 
were an almost complete failure. We deprived our- 
selves of every luxury and of many comforts. The 
only money I spent outside of our household ex- 
penses were my dues to the church and fifty cents to 
the Missionary Society and a dollar to the Pastor’s 
Aid Society. And then Minnie, our little eight- year- 
old Minnie, died. We loved her, Dick, so much 
that it seemed to me that my heart was broken for- 
ever. As we were so poor we had to buy a very 
cheap coffin. It only cost fifteen dollars, and a good 
neighbor put some nice silk lining in it. I sat up 
that night myself and made her a pretty little white 
dress to be buried in, and I made the pillow myself 
for her head to rest upon. Oh, Dick, Dick, if you 
had seen how beautiful she was as she lay there with 
her little folded hands in the coffin, with her golden 
curls and her sweet, closed eyelids, you would have 
known how my heart was broken, and why that 
interest was not paid.” 

Then that little old woman broke down com- 
pletely ; then she cried like a child ; then she cried 
just as she had done more than thirty years before, 
when she first confessed that she loved him. 

In a moment Richard was her old-time lover 
again. In a moment he was close by her side ; in a 
108 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


moment he was saying, “ Don’t cry, Ellen, don’t 
cry.” 

Then he said to her, almost with a sob, “Oh, 
Ellen, why did you deceive me? Why did you 
marry another man? How could you do it, how 
could you do it ?” 

But she replied, “You know that I was weak; 
for God’s sake have pity on me !” 

Then he knew that she still loved him ; then he 
knew that although she had been a faithful wife and 
mother for thirty years she had never ceased to carry 
his image in her heart. 

“ Ellen, Ellen !” he cried, “you have wrecked my 
life; yes, although I am a millionaire, you have 
blighted my heart forever ; although the world calls 
me a successful man, my whole career, on your 
account has been a miserable failure.” 

“ Hush, hush !” she said ; “ some one is coming.” 

Then he looked up, and there within the door-way 
appeared a girl, — a girl so lovely that he stood trans- 
fixed with astonishment. 

But he was still more amazed to see that she 
was the perfect image of Ellen as she looked thirty 
years before. Then he knew, without being told, 
that this was Ellen’s daughter. Oh, what a won- 
derful resurrection ! What a divine message from 
the desolate shadows of the past ! Who would have 
thought that in this dreary country, amid such envi- 
ronments of poverty and wTeck and ruin, such 
109 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


beauty should unfold ? What a miracle of the re- 
vivifying powers of Nature ! As he gazed upon 
her, with her dusky hair falling in web-like ringlets 
around her pearl-pure forehead, as he gazed into her 
dark -brown eyes, as he beheld her smile, his heart 
was moved as never before. 

When beholding her it seemed to him that every- 
thing that was beautiful, every thing that was lovely, 
everything that was lovable, everything that was 
sweet, everything that was charming in the dead 
past had come to life again, and burst forth into one 
peerless blossom. 

In her eyes was the splendor of suns that per- 
ished six thousand years ago, and the glory of mag- 
nificent mornings that bloodied and faded in the 
childhood of the world. In her lips was the flame 
of the fiery tulips that flowered like a crimson cloud 
in the fabled hanging gardens of Babylon. In her 
cheeks there unfolded again the roses that budded in 
the arbors of the daughter of Pharaoh, the sweet- 
heart of Solomon, the hyacinths that breathed their 
perfume to Hafiz, the poet-lover of Persia, and the 
lilies of the field that sprang into blossom in the 
pathway of the Son of Mary. 

In her it seemed that all the dreams of all the 
poets had at last come true ; that all the ideals of all 
the painters and sculptors and singers had at last 
become real ; that all the sweet hopes of all the 
longing lovers that have ever lived and died, had at 
last borne flower and fruit. 


110 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


While gazing upon her he thought that in her 
lived again the beautiful Rachel, for whom Jacob 
toiled fourteen long years, and that in her the tender, 
timid Ruth returned to earth and stood again amid 
the golden corn to meet her lover Boaz. In her 
breathed again the high-born ladies who brought 
goblets of ruby wine to the wandering minstrels as 
they sang and played before them of deeds of match- 
less valor and undying love, or one might think that 
Juliet had awakened from her mouldering shroud 
and returned from the realms of death beneath the 
burning kisses of her broken-hearted Romeo. She 
brought life and love and joy with her, as in forgot- 
ten fabulous days the white-breasted doves brought 
nourishment to the baby-queen Semirami s when 
exposed in the desert to perish. 

When looking into her face you would say, “ I 
believe not only that there is a God, for no one but 
God could have made such a miracle of loveliness 
and beauty and splendor, but I believe also that He 
loves me, else He would not have sent such a sweet 
face to cherish my desolate life.” 

But he was awakened from his revery suddenly 
by Mrs. Harrison, who said, “ Ellen, this is my old 
friend, Mr. Wolcott.” 

“Oh, I am so glad to see you,” answered the 
daughter; “I have often heard mother speak of 
you-” 


ill 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 


VI. 

After talking for some time with the mother 
and daughter, Wolcott saw that it was getting late 
and he arose to go. 

“ Good-by,” he said to little Ellen, gently kissing 
her ; “ God bless you, my child.” 

Then he turned to the mother, saying, “Well, 
Ellen, good-by. I shall return to New York to- 
night, and I must hurry away. I shall probably 
never see you again ; but as to that mortgage, don’t 
trouble yourself about it just now. I will let you 
know if I ever wish to foreclose.” 

“Dick,” she answered, “may God be merciful to 
you as you have been merciful to me. You know 
it was He who said, ‘ Forgive us our debts as we 
forgive our debtors.’ And, Dick, I want to say to 
you before you go, that I want you to be a Christian. 
They tell me that you are very rich, Dick, but you 
know that at the last day we shall all be very poor. 
I want you to promise me to lay up riches in heaven, 
where thieves enter not and where moth and rust 
cannot corrupt.” 

In a few minutes more he went to his horse, un- 
hitched him, looked for the last time at Ellen, and 
then rode away. 

As he passed forever from her sight, she watched 
him, silent and gray and desolate, going back to the 
heartless, bustling world again, back to the marts 
of mammon, to cheat and to be cheated, — her eyes 
112 


FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE 

filled with tears, and she sobbed like a forsaken 
child. 


VII. 

That night at the supper-table, after Jack had 
returned, and all the family had gathered together, 
a messenger who had rode all the way from Mem- 
phis, brought a large envelope full of papers, ad- 
dressed to Mrs. Ellen Harrison. Ellen hastily 
tore open the envelope, when — could she believe 
her eyes? — her note for five thousand dollars fell 
out — and, would you believe it? — there were these 
words on the back : “ Paid in fall.” Then a quit- 
claim deed fell out, — yes, a quit-claim deed, begin- 
ning, “ Know all men by these presents, that I, 
Richard Wolcott, of the City, County, and State of 
New York, in consideration,” — yes, there it was, — 
“in consideration of the payment to me, cash in 
hand, of the sum of five thousand dollars,” — yes, 
there was that, too, — “ the receipt whereof I hereby 
acknowledge ” 

Oh, this was too much ! Ellen burst into a flood 
of grateful tears. There could be no doubt of it, — 
Dick had voluntarily cancelled the debt, and this 
was a quit-claim deed to “ the said Ellen Harrison, 
wife of John Harrison, her heirs and assigns for- 
ever.” 


113 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY. 


i. 

There was a great revival in progress at the 
Methodist church of our little Mississippi town. 

Backsliders were reclaimed. War-worn veterans 
were fired again with their old-time enthusiasm, and 
sinners came to a fearful realization of the error of 
their ways. 

Night after night the Rev. Mr. McStivers, a cele- 
brated evangelist, portrayed in vivid and startling 
figures the grief, the anguish, and the despair await- 
ing the cohorts of the world, the flesh, and the devil. 

Night after night his assistant, the Rev. Mr. Sin- 
gleton, in sweet and gentle exhortations and in 
sweeter and gentler songs, besought the poor wan- 
dering sheep to return to the fold and escape the 
doom of the lost. 

Night after night the little church was crowded to 
suffocation by excited throngs. Night after night 
the good old sisters who always sat in the amen 
corner, and whose lights of faith never grew dim, 
sang in a high, quivering key the primitive Meth- 
odist hymns of John and Charles Wesley, with all 
the fervor of the Christians of apostolic days. 

114 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


Night after night some lukewarm brother would 
regain his long-lost zeal, some giddy young girl 
would profess religion with tears of joy, or some 
hardened reprobate would come forward and cast his 
broken heart before the shrine of his long-suffering 
Redeemer. 

The hale and hearty old Methodist shout, which 
had become a lost art in that worldly congregation, 
was revived in all its primitive vigor. 

The flippant sinner, who attended through profane 
curiosity, or to air his scepticism, or to sit in the seat 
of the scornful, soon found himself under heavy fire ; 
surrounded and supplicated, urged and entreated, 
threatened and implored, there was no escape from 
unconditional surrender. 

Many an old toper had come forward and forsworn 
his bottle forever; many a rubicund saloon-keeper 
had announced his intention of emptying his whiskey- 
barrels in the street ; many a wild boy had thrilled 
his old mother’s heart with joy by rising from the 
mourners’ bench and shouting his faith aloud. 

At last among the many sinners who had attended 
the meeting Harry Warren alone remained uncap- 
tured. And he seemed a hopeless case indeed. 

There had never been a gathering of the dissi- 
pated young men about town at which he was not 
the presiding genius; there had never been a repre- 
hensible escapade of which he was not ring-leader; 
there had never been a mischievous trick perpe- 
trated on any law-abiding citizen that suspicion had 
115 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 

not lain, with fearful likelihood of justice, upon his 
shoulders. 

In addition to all this he claimed to be a sceptic, 
and, although he was by no means learned in such 
matters, being indeed quite superficial in all his re- 
ligious investigations, he nevertheless possessed some 
little skill in argument, which at times enabled him 
to get the better of opponents more superficial than 
himself. 

It is needless to say, of course, that a young man 
of such reprehensible habits was quite a lion among 
the young women of the little town, and many a 
sober, steady young man had found himself sup- 
planted in their affections, although the parents of 
the girl in question invariably took sides against our 
friend Harry. 

But at last the great revival was about to close. 

On the final night of the meeting Harry was seen 
on the back seat next to the door. 

After the congregation had joined in singing fer- 
vently “ Amazing grace! How sweet the sound,” 
the Rev. Mr. McStivers arose, stern, sallow, and 
fire eyed. His text was from the Book of Deu- 
teronomy : “ Fora fire is kindled in mine anger, and 
shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume 
the earth with her increase and set on fire the foun- 
dations of the mountains. 

“ I will heap mischiefs upon them ; I will spend 
mine arrows upon them. 

" They shall be burnt with hunger and devoured 
116 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


with burning heat and with bitter destruction ; I 
will also send the teeth of beasts upon them with the 
poison of the* serpents of the dust.” 

Then this Patrick Henry of the pulpit, with fear- 
fully picturesque eloquence, hurled such a fiery 
philippic against the votaries of sin, it seemed that 
the hearts of all unbelievers must be melted as by 
the floods of lava from some terrible Vesuvius. 

Groans of anguish and pity at the coming doom 
of the sinners arose like a wild, unearthly chant 
from among the throngs of the converted. But 
Harry sat still, pale and defiant. It was certain 
that he, too, had been somewhat agitated by the 
fearful earnestness of the appeal, yet it was also cer- 
tain that his heart remained untouched. 

At last the eloquent divine had finished, and, 
quivering with emotion, unnerved and exhausted, 
he sank into his chair. 

Then the congregation sang that other brave old 
Methodist war-cry, “Am I a soldier of the cross?” 

After that the sweet singer, Brother Singleton, 
arose and began to talk. It was plain that Brother 
Singleton was not long for this world. His beautiful 
pale face was surely sealed for the grave by death’s 
greatest captain, Consumption. There was a hectic 
flush in his cheeks and a painful cough often inter- 
rupted his discourse. 

His great brown eyes had dark rings under them, 
and over his pure white brow one could almost see 
the halo which was soon to be his in heaven. 


117 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


He took no text whatever, and it was evident in 
a few moments that lie had not come to preach fire 
and brimstone, but to bear the olive-branch of divine 
peace and forgiveness and love. 

He apologized in a touching manner for the fatal 
cough which was impeding his utterance, alluded 
feelingly to his rapidly approaching end, which was 
to relieve him of all his labors, and then admonished 
the Christians present to remain firm in the faith, so 
that they might meet him in heaven. 

“ As for you, my unconverted friends,” he said, 
“ my heart goes out to you with unutterable love 
and unspeakable pity. I cannot, I will not believe 
that you are to be lost. But I long, before I go, to 
see you safe in the arms of Jesus. 

“ I know that you are young and gay, and that you 
say that you are happy. But I know, too, that beneath 
all your outward gayety and carelessness, your hearts 
are aching with such anguish as the world will 
never suspect. I know that you long for rest. I 
know that Peace is a stranger to you. 

“ I know that your life is no longer sweet and 
happy and beautiful. I know that you are restless 
and uneasy. I know that you are weary of sin and 
that you want to come to Christ, — that you are only 
waiting for this last urgent invitation, and I am here 
to give it.” 

Brother Singleton was right, for, before he had 
finished, the last stubborn sinner had sought peace 
in the fold of the Methodists. 


118 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


II. 

A few nights after his profession of faith, Harry 
was at Kate Raymond’s house. He and Kate had 
been lovers for some time, and were to be married at 
an early day. 

He had finished the story of his conversion, to 
which she had listened at first with apparent indif- 
ference, then with ill-concealed annoyance. 

But when he had at last summoned courage to tell 
her of his determination, not only to throw aside his 
evil habits, but to become a Methodist preacher, she 
arose in open rebellion. 

The truth of the case was, that while Kate was a 
very sensible girl in many respects, one of Harry’s 
charms had unconsciously been to her that very 
recklessness which he was now about to renounce. 

There was a romance about his wildness and a 
chivalric glamour about his dissipation which had 
secretly pleased her. 

But now all this was to be lost in the dull, dry, 
prosaic desert of a religious life. 

Yet she could have pardoned all that, had he not 
determined to be a preacher; and a Methodist 
preacher at that ! To be a preacher’s wife and to 
live on prayers and hymns and sermons all one’s 
life ! 

To move about from place to place, as the Meth- 
odist Conference might dictate ; to live in the coun- 
try, probably five or six miles from a railroad ; 

119 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


to endure the dismal horrors of taking the rounds 
from Mount Moriah Church to Chapel Hill, from 
Rolling Fork Circuit to Pocahontas Mission ; to 
dwell among farmers in the rural districts and among 
mechanics in the town ; to renounce theatres and 
clubs and dances ! 

Kate, let it be remarked here, belonged to the 
more aristocratic All-Souls’ Church of our town, 
where a small congregation followed the ritual of 
the Episcopal creed, and I am sorry to say that she 
held her foolish little head somewhat above the 
simple Methodists. 

It would be needless to say that had she been a 
better member of her own church she would have 
had more respect for Harry’s, but then little Kate’s 
religion had never disturbed her mental faculties to 
any great extent. 

Her statement to him was plain and positive. 
She would not marry him if he were fixed in his 
determination to become a preacher. 

Harry had before that vaguely feared this out- 
come. Yet he had expected to be able to win her 
✓ over to his side again, as he thought that her tears 
would be coaxed away by his kisses. 

But he was appalled by the firmness of her answer. 

“ I love you,” she said, with the slightest tremor 
in her voice and a little choking in her throat, “ but 
I will never marry you if you become a preacher. 
I am not fit to be a minister’s wife, and such a life 
120 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


would make me miserable. I will not. I cannot. 
Don’t try to change me, for I’ll not listen to you.” 

She seemed to have suddenly grown ten years 
older. Heretofore she had been his sweetheart, his 
pet ; now she was a full-grown woman, with a mind 
of her own. 

“Still, Kate— — ” he said, trying to hold her 
hand. But she jerked her hand from his, and 
replied, — 

“ You cannot hold my hand. I see that we are 
soon to be separated, and it is worse than foolish for 
me to allow this.” 

He laughed at her mockingly. “Well, little 
miss, it seems to me that you are rather late in re- 
fusing me that right. It has been a long time since 
you scolded me for holding your hand.” 

“ No ; and I am not scolding you now ; but I mean 
what I say ; if we are to part, then the sooner the 
better. If I expected to marry you, I would not 
■care ; but I see that you are determined, and so am 
I.” His amazement was so great that he sat looking 
speechlessly into her face. 

“ Harry,” she continued, “if you will promise me 
to give up this foolish idea, then I will be glad to 
marry you. If you will not, that is the end. What 
do you say to that?” 

“My answer is, that no woman on earth shall 
make me shirk my duty ; that I believe in my heart 
God has called me to preach, and I will not be 
coward enough to become ashamed of my calling, 
121 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


though every man, woman, and child, together with 
the devil himself, should laugh at me for it.” 

“ Very well, then. That settles the matter. I 
tell you plainly that not only do I dislike the life 
of a preacher’s wife, but I consider myself unworthy, 
besides. 

“ It requires courage, patience and goodness to- 
fill such a place. I am not that kind of a woman. I 
love the world too much. I am too fond of balls 
and theatres. Not only for my good, but your own, 
I will be firm. I am not good enough to be your 
wife, and you would find too late that life with me 
would be nothing but misery.” 

“ Oh, no, no, Kate ! How could my life be mis- 
erable with you under any circumstances? Oh, 
Kate, Kate, I would be happy with you anywhere 
or anyhow. But without you everything would 
seem unbearable.” 

“ Harry,” she replied, “ it would be very wrong 
of me to try to change your mind. It may be that 
God has really called you to preach, and if that be 
true, I do not dare to tempt you from your duty. 
So I must say good-night.” 

She arose, and he, dazed and confounded, fol- 
lowed her to the door. “ I will see you again, and 
then you will think better of my plan,” he stam- 
mered. 

“No,” she answered, firmly, but almost with a 
sob, “ there is nothing more for me to say. Do not 
write, for I will not answer ; do not call, for I will 
122 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


not see you. It is best for both.” Then she burst 
into a storm of childish tears and slammed the door 
in his face. 


III. 

Six months had passed and every one of those 
months seemed as long as a year to Harry. The 
Methodist Conference had just met, and he had been 
assigned to Mount Olivet Circuit, where he was to 
preach to three country churches, ten miles from the 
nearest railroad, at a salary of one hundred and fifty 
dollars a year. Every day he had eagerly called 
for his mail at the post-office, hoping for a letter 
from Kate. But not a line would she write him. 

Every day, when old Aunt Sally would pass by 
his home, his heart would leap riotously as he vainly 
hoped that she was bringing him a letter from Kate, 
as she used to do in the happy days of the past. 

But Aunt Sally would only shake her woolly 
head ominously as he inquired for news of Kate. 
She had seen his sweetheart only once, she said, but 
Kate had even refused to talk about her old lover 
and had said that she cared for him no longer. 

He longed inexpressibly to meet her on the street, 
so that he might implore her to reconsider her de- 
termination. But she remained close at home, evi- 
dently to avoid him. He did not write or go to see 
her, because she had told him that such attempts 
would be useless. 

At last his heart sank completely in despair, and 
123 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


he prepared to go alone to his work on Mount Oli- 
vet Circuit. In spite of his zeal as a new convert, 
his very soul was appalled at the undertaking. He 
was to renounce all his hilarious companions for 
the society of the local preachers and the old sisters 
of his church. Instead of the gossip of congenial 
spirits he was to have the revival and the prayer- 
meeting. Instead of going to dances and card- 
parties he was to be with the sick and officiate at 
funerals. He was to join others in. marriage and yet 
was never to win his own Kate for a bride. 

Then to think of the ignorance, the poverty, the 
loneliness and the dreariness of Mount Olivet Cir- 
cuit ! To be compelled to get out of bed at four 
o’clock in the morning and go back to bed at nine 
in the evening; to read nothing but sermons and 
drowsy editorials in weekly religious newspapers; to 
live ten miles from a railroad ; to talk to simple 
country people on subjects utterly uninteresting to 
him ; to be compelled to wear a long' face and to 
look pious when he half suspected himself of being 
a hypocrite ! All these thoughts deeply discour- 
aged him, so that he even questioned whether he 
had ever been really converted. 

What right had he to preach when he himself 
was nothing but a poor doubting Thomas ? 

Nevertheless he set about his preparations for 
leaving, and on a chill November morning, about 
five o’clock, before the stars had all disappeared; he 
found himself, grip-sack in hand, on his way to the 
124 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


railroad depot and ready to make the journey to 
Mount Olivet Circuit. 

Just before he reached the depot he heard sounds 
of music in a brilliantly-lighted house on his way. 

It was the night of the german, he suddenly re- 
membered, and at the house of a rich widow, where 
he himself had often danced till daylight. But 
that was long ago, and he had not been invited this 
time. 

He felt his heart sink within him as he remem- 
bered, too, that Kate must be there. Yes, his own 
beautiful Kate. She must be there, dancing and 
laughing, and forgetting him as he trudged by with 
his aching heart ! 

Suddenly his face grew crimson as he saw Kate 
coming down the walk to the gate, leaning on the 
arm of Charley Watkins, his most formidable rival. 
He felt ashamed of his ready-made trousers, his old 
Derby hat, his stiff white cravat, his coarse shoes, 
and his worn grip-sack, which all proclaimed the 
humble Methodist circuit rider. At first he turned 
to avoid meeting them, but they saw him and he 
could not fail to face them. Charley was well 
groomed in a swallow- tailed coat, an immaculate 
shirt-front, patent-leather shoes, a high-standing 
collar, and all the paraphernalia of evening dress. 
Kate was as beautiful as a lily in her white gown. 
As he passed them at the gate, they both spoke to 
him, but he felt a contemptuous gaze fixed on his 
homely outfit, and he had hardly gone a dozen 
125 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


paces before he heard them laughing. He thought 
that they must be ridiculing his awkward appear- 
ance. 

Had Harry not been a minister of the Gospel, I 
fear that Charley would have had cause to regret 
his mirth. As it was, however, it must be confessed 
that Harry clinched his fists, gritted his teeth, and 
muttered something hardly in keeping with the 
doctrines of the meek and lowly in spirit. Indeed, 
as he trudged along, humming to himself for con- 
solation, “ Am I a soldier of the cross ?” I regret 
to believe that the belligerent spirit of that old 
hymn was somewhat more to his liking than it 
should have been. 


IV. 

After the lapse of a year, Harry came back to 
his old home depressed in spirits, but still resolute 
and defiant. All the poetry and romance had faded 
from his life, and there was nothing left but care 
and self-denial. 

All his misgivings about Mount Olivet Circuit had 
been realized with unexpected force. The dulness, the 
darkness, and the repulsiveness of such a life had only 
been too coarsely branded upon his mind. 

Nevertheless he had done his best. And he had 
not been entirely without his reward. The simple 
country people had become very fond of him. He 
had made many converts to his church and had 
given new life to its older membership. 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


So well were his services appreciated that they 
had actually paid him a salary of one hundred and 
seventy-five dollars instead of one hundred and 
fifty, as agreed ! 

In addition to all this, he had done so well on 
Mount Olivet Circuit that his merits had been called 
to the attention of the bishop, and the conference had 
determined to send him to a far better charge next 
year, with much easier work and much better pay. 

He had seen and heard nothing whatever of Kate 
during this time. His friends had advised him to 
quit thinking of her, and to abandou all thoughts 
of winning her back. 

“She is foolish and arrogant,” they would all 
say. “She is utterly unfit for a preacher’s wife. 
A woman so fickle and so shallow is utterly un- 
worthy of you. You should marry some sensible, 
pious woman, who would be a real help-meet to 
you” 

Then there were many sisters of the church, con- 
ventional and orthodox, who were said to have de- 
signs upon the young minister. But no matter how 
good they were, no matter how kind to him, no 
matter how faithful to the church, the preacher still 
thought deep down in his heart of his little daughter 
of Heth, and refused to be comforted. 

He had been in town nearly a week, and yet he 
had never seen Kate or received the slightest message 
from her. 

At last the good ladies of the Methodist church 
127 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


determined to give a festival, and to this, of course, 
'Harry was invited. 

A church festival in Mississippi means a gath- 
ering of the young people of a church, together 
with some of the older members and a few of the 
children besides. 

It is a social affair, but with a business adjunct 
in the shape of certain booths and bazaars where ice- 
cream, cake, lemonade, cigars, and other things are 
sold by the young ladies of the congregation for the 
benefit of the church to which they belong. There 
is no dancing, no card-playing, or other “ worldly 
amusements.” 

It might be considered a somewhat tame affair 
by the people of fashion in a large city, but the 
young men and women never fail to enjoy it for all 
that. 

After the festival had been in progress an hour or 
so, Harry was dumfounded as he turned his eyes to- 
wards the door to note the latest arrival. Could he 
be dreaming, could he be beside himself with disap- 
pointed hopes? 

For lo ! Whom should he behold but his own 
sweetheart, his darling, his Kate ! 

Yes, there she stood, dressed in pink and wearing 
a bunch of pink roses at her throat ! 

Yes, there she stood, blushing and blushing until 
her own little pink cheeks wore a deeper hue than 
her pink dress and her pink roses. 

It was a great surprise, indeed, to see Kate, an 
128 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


aristocratic Episcopalian and a society girl, at a 
plain old-fashioned Methodist church festival. 

In an instant Harry’s old-time love, which had 
drooped and faded under a thousand discourage- 
ments, blossomed forth hardier than ever. 

His hand trembled so that he upset a glass of 
water on the dress of Miss Selina Stebbins, the 
young lady with whom he was then talking. He 
turned red, apologized profusely and awkwardly and 
pretended not to see Kate, the cause of it all. 

Miss Stebbins was far from pretty, and although 
a most amiable young woman and one who was said 
to have cast yearning eyes upon the young preacher,, 
it must be confessed that her charms had proved 
rather ineffectual. 

Kate, on her part, however, did not pretend to be 
ignorant of Harry’s presence. She came to him with 
the sweetest smile in the world, held out both her 
hands and gave his a very decided squeeze. 

“ Why haven’t you been out to see me ?” was 
her first question. Harry blurted out some foolish 
reply, giving several excuses, each of which contra- 
dicted the other. 

His embarrassment was relieved almost in an 
instant, however, by the voice of the local minister 
announcing that the game of “ Auction” had begun. 

For the information of those who have not had 
the advantage of a knowledge of this very interest- 
ing game, it would perhaps be well to say that it is 
still played sometimes at country church festivals in 
129 


9 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


a manner something like this: all the young men 
are sent out of the main room, and in their absence 
each one is sold at auction to the highest bidder, the 
young ladies of course doing the bidding. 

As soon as any young man is struck off he is sent 
for, and without knowing who has bought him he is 
required to sit down by the girl who has now become 
his owner. If he make a mistake by sitting down 
by the wrong girl the other young ladies clap their 
hands, and he must sit by another. The hands are 
clapped every time a mistake is made, and the 
clamor only ceases when he has selected the right 
girl. 

Of course, it is generally easy for the bashful 
lover to guess which damsel has won him, but it is 
sometimes quite embarrassing when he is not sure of 
his ground. 

Harry waited in the hall quite a long time ; in the 
mean while a number of the young men were re- 
called. At last a small boy who was listening at the 
key-hole blurted out, “ Oh, they’re auctioning Mr. 
Warren ! Two young ladies are bidding for him ! 
One of ’em has bid fifty cents, but the other has 
raised hers to a dollar. One of ’em is Miss Stebbins, 
but I don’t know the .other. Oh, my ! One of ’em 
has bid four dollars and the other has raised it to 
five dollars. They’re both in earnest, I te’l you, 
and both of ’em is awful anxious to get him. One 
says six dollars and the other goes to seven.” 

Hardly had the urchin finished when the door 
130 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


opened and Harry was recalled. As he stepped in 
the room full of laughing girls he was dizzy with 
confusion. He feared beyond measure that Miss 
Stebbins had won him, but was pleased to see that 
Kate was still without a companion. 

He saw the sallow face and the strawberry-blonde 
hair of Miss Selina Stebbins, but was glad to no- 
tice that she was not apparently expecting him to 
be with her. 

Nevertheless, he determined to sit by her, which 
he did, spasmodically. Instantly, to his unutterable 
joy, there was a deafening noise of clapping of 
hands, which showed that he had taken the wrong 
girl. Then he looked at Kate; she was red with 
mortification and anger. In an instant he rose to go 
to her, and in another instant she was laughing at 
him like a happy little queen ; her big brown eyes 
said “ Come,” and so did her laughing lips and her 
tell-tale blushes. 

Y. 

That night, as the festival was breaking up, 
Kate’s younger brother came to take her home, but 
strange to say, she sent him back, saying that she 
already had an escort. 

Then what was more natural and proper than that 
Harry should be pressed into service ? 

Of course young ladies must have escorts on such 
occasions, and, as she and Harry were old friends, 
Kate did not have to make any hints to induce 
131 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


Harry to do the right thing and offer to take her 
home. 

The full moon was shining over the frosty roofs 
in unsullied splendor. All was calm and peaceful 
and happy. Now and then could be heard the lusty 
crowing of some restless old cock in the distance, 
now the drowsy bark of some half-awakened dog. 
The withered leaves seemed to be making merry 
over the lovers, shaking their twisted fingers at 
them, or fluttering down to play with their feet. 
The air was very chill, and Harry felt his little 
charge clinging rather close to him. 

At first many people walked along with them, but 
one by one they stopped at their homes or turned 
into other streets, till at last the two were walking 
alone. 

Yes, alone ! Alone for- the first time since the 
agony of their separation ; alone for the first time 
after all these months of anguish and heart-break. 
But now they were nearing her home, and they 
would have only a little more chance to be alone. 
It was Kate who spoke first. “ Harry,” she said, 
“ do you think you can forgive me ?” 

“ For what, Kate *?” he asked. 

“ Because I have been so heartless to you. Harry, 
if you will take me now, I will be your wife, even 
if you are a preacher.” 

What his reply was we have never learned, but 
some of the members of the congregation of the 
Rev. Mr. Warren might have been shocked had 
132 


V 


A PREACHER’S LOVE STORY 


they seen their dignified minister holding in his 
arms a young damsel with all the ardor of one of 
worldly tendencies. 

However that may be, I am sure that Harry had 
some scriptural warrant in the precept that “it is 
not good for man to be alone.” 


133 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD. 


i. 

For eight weeks I had languished with a slow 
fever ; but on this afternoon, for the first time during 
my long confinement, I was able to sit up in bed. 

Nevertheless, I did not hail the occasion with any 
enthusiasm, for reasons which I will now mention. 

For nine years I had been guardian of Nellie 
Sanderson, and I was now defaulter to the extent 
of a hundred thousand dollars. Yes, a hundred 
thousand dollars ! There was not the slightest hope 
of payment. 

Instead of being able to pay a hundred thousand 
dollars, I could not on my life have raised one hun- 
dred cents. My lawyer had advised me that he had 
no hope of acquitting me, and the penitentiary was 
to be my destiny. 

I had been unable to give bond, but, having been 
ill so long, I was allowed to remain at home, while 
a deputy sheriff kept guard in the next room. 
Since I was convalescent, however, on this evening 
I would be removed to the county jail. 

Yet, as a matter of fact, my physician had told 
me that removal, during such a critical period, would 
134 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


cause a relapse, and would be certain death ; but he 
had left town, and as I was determined to elude the 
law, I had informed the criminal court authorities 
that his advice was to the effect that I could be re- 
moved with safety, and that I was ready to go. In 
this way I knew that Death would be the friend who 
would relieve me of my anguish and my shame. 

My ward, a young lady of nineteen years, was now 
in Europe, where she had been travelling about six 
months. 

Nine years before this time, when I was a young 
bachelor of thirty, my old friend Jack Sanderson 
had died, and by his will I was made guardian of 
his only child, Nellie, then a little girl ten years 
old. 

Nellie was something of an heiress. Her father’s 
estate was worth more than half a million. 

From the very beginning I had taken great in- 
terest in her. During her childhood we had been 
inseparable. She had been my pet, my friend, and 
my confidant. 

But during her absence at college I had seen much 
less of her. It is true that her letters were constant 
and full of affectionate expressions, but being a poor 
correspondent myself, my answers were generally 
short and infrequent. Now, having graduated, she 
was taking this European tour preparatory to* 
making her dtbut the next winter. 

With regard to my defalcation, the reader must 
not be too harsh with me. About a year before I 
135 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


liad met the agent of the Eldorado Mining Company, 
his company being a swindling concern based on 
worthless gold-mines in Nevada. By the honeyed 
persuasions of this agent I had been induced to 
invest one hundred thousand dollars of my ward’s 
money in the worthless stock ; but instead of placing 
the stock in my ward’s name, as I had intended him 
to do, he had placed it in my own, so it resulted that 
not only was every cent of the money lost, but as the 
stock had been placed in my own name, it seemed a 
clear case of defalcation, which would surely send me 
to the penitentiary. 

It is true that at heart I was entirely innocent, 
but every scrap of the written evidence condemned 
me. I had been merely careless, it is true, but the 
loss branded me as a felon and the world condemned 
me as an outcast. 

For over a year I had kept the matter secret, 
hoping against hope, living in an earthly hell, vainly 
trying to keep back the fearful truth, vainly hoping 
that the stock would rise in value and thus save me. 
Yet I grew gray with anguish and apprehension, till 
at last I was sent to bed with a slow fever. Then 
there was an investigation, and next day the news- 
papers told the story of my disgrace to a hundred 
thousand readers. 

I passed over hurriedly the story of my feverish 
convulsions, my delirious night-mare agonies, my 
burning, parching thirst, my insane mutterings, and 
my terrible prayers for death. 

136 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


However, I was now recovering at last. I had 
suffered so much that tears would no longer refresh 
my weary eyes. I was ruined, I knew it, and I did 
not care. I knew that removal would be death, 
mid that it would free me forever from the world’s 
contempt. 

But there was one thing, and one thing alone in 
■all the world for which I longed. It was a vain 
hope, and yet for that solely I clung with anxiety to 
this hateful life. 

I wished to see Nellie for just five minutes. I 
wished to tell her that I had not intentionally robbed 
lier, to tell her that I was not so bad as I seemed, to 
beg her to forgive me before I died ; but there was 
not the slightest hope of this. She was now some- 
where in Europe, five thousand miles away. 

My nurse brought in the mail which had accumu- 
lated during the long time of my sickness. 

I glanced over the large package of letters. Most 
of them were bills from creditors who were now 
frantic to get their money before my last cent had 
been taken. 

There was a letter from the Pelican Club, of which 
I had been a member for fifteen years, requesting my 
resignation. Another was a notice from the Pythian 
‘Club, informing me of my expulsion. 

"Well, well, well,” I said to myself, "think of 
it ! These are the places where I have spent thou- 
sands of dollars ; these are the places where, as a 
137 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


boon companion, I have met so many so-called 
friends ; but I suppose it is all right. I will soon 
be where I will not need their friendship any 
longer.” 

When I glanced at the newspapers collected before 
me one of them had a paragraph in these words : 

“ Albert Willis, the guardian of Miss Sanderson, 
who recently defaulted to his ward for about a hun- 
dred thousand dollars, has so far recovered that he 
will be removed to the county jail this afternoon. 

“ Willis became quite a swell on other people’s 
money, but the scene of his triumphs will doubtless- 
be transferred from the aristocratic Pelican Club to 
the State penitentiary, where he will be allowed to> 
display his elegant taste for fashionable dress in 
striped trousers. The time must come when the 
gentlemanly thief is to be treated like any other 
common felon. All prudent young men should take- 
warning from the career of this gentlemanly de- 
faulter.” 

I looked vainly over the mail for a letter from 
Nellie, but there was none. Doubtless she had 
heard how things had gone, and thus condemned 
me like all the rest of the world. But as she was 
the loser, this was only natural, and I could not 
blame her. 

As I lay there in bed, lonely and broken-hearted, 
every minute expecting the arrival of the ambulance 
138 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 

which was to carry me to jail, I longed — oh, how I 
longed ! — to see Nellie again. To see her meant to 
die in peace ; not to see her meant to die in despair. 
Then, as I turned towards the wall, sick of life and 
yet hating death without having seen her, craving 
the sight of her face as a perishing traveller in the 
desert craves for the cool springs of his native moun- 
tains, I heard a voice which seemed like a sound 
from far away ; a voice like that of one whom you 
have lost forever, a voice which you had never hoped 
to hear again. 

Then the door opened. I heard the rustle of a 
dress, the patter of two little feet, and then a quick, 
eager voice saying, “ Here I am, guardy ; it is your 
own little Nellie come back to you again \” 

I could not believe it. It was only a delightful 
trance, or it might be that I was dying and with my 
fading eyes had beheld her in a strange land thou- 
sands of miles away. • 

But no, I was not deceived ; I was not dream- 
ing; I was not dying ! For there she really knelt 
beside my bed, her beautiful brown eyes filled with 
sweetness and loveliness, with her rich golden-brown 
hair, with the sweetest smile ever beheld on the face 
of a woman. There she was, wearing a lovely little 
white dress, with white lilacs breathing delicate frag- 
rance on her bosom. 

O Nellie, Nellie ! How sweet you were then I 
How divine was the love-light of your eyes ! How 
delicious was the perfume of the lilacs you wore ! 

139 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


“ You know it all, of course,” I said. 

“ I have heard it all,” she answered. “ But don’t 
mind that; I love you, guardy” (that was the nick- 
name she had given me), “ and you must not care 
for it any longer.” 

“ But I thought you were in Europe,” I replied. 

“ I was there when I first heard of your trouble, 
but I started bade just as soon as I heard of it.” 

“ Nellie,” I said to her, “ you cannot know how 
glad I am to see you. I wanted to tell you I am 
not as bad as they say. I wanted to tell you that I 
merely made a mistake, and did not do any inten- 
tional wrong. Come, sit on the bed beside me, and 
I will tell you all about it.” 

She did come and sit beside me, and then I went 
over the story, step by step, from beginning to end. 
When I had finished she said, “ Oh, well, guardy, 
that’s all right. I have plenty of money besides 
that, and I don’t feel the loss at all. Don’t worry 
about it. I will make it all right.” 

“ But,” I answered, “ you are only a minor, a 
child in the eye of the law, and you have no power 
to release me.” 

Then her eyes filled with unshed tears and her 
lips quivered as she replied, — 

“But I have valuable jewelry, and by selling that 
I could save you from all danger for the present.” 

“ No,” I said, “ that idea is equally hopeless. As 
you are still under twenty-one years of age, by the 
law of this State you are just as powerless to sell 
140 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 

that jewelry as you are to release me from my obli- 
gation/’ 

“Oh, it is outrageous!” she cried. “If I am 
satisfied, who has a right to complain? If it was 
my money that was lost, why should anybody else 
worry about it?” 

“Nellie,” I said, “there is no hope for me. I 
must stand the consequence of my neglect ; but since 
I know that you have forgiven me, I am willing to 
bear my punishment. Do not grieve about me, and 
I will bear up bravely under all my misfortunes.”" 

“Well, I know that all will end well, guardy,” 
she said, kissing my faded cheek. 

Poor Nellie ! little did she realize my condition. 

Then, with all a woman’s wonderful tact, she 
began at once to make the room more comfortable 
and neat and clean. She helped me tenderly out of 
bed, and then she rummaged about the house till 
she found fresh clean sheets and pillow-cases, and 
with them replaced the old ones ; she beat the bed 
and the pillows till they became soft and airy again ; 
she pushed up the windows to let in the balmy 
breeze; she brought fresh water and bathed my 
pallid face and wasted hands; then with an un- 
speakable modesty she dressed me with her own 
hands in fresh linen. 

Then with infinite kindness she took me, all 
weakened and worn with disease, in her own brave 
little arms and lay me back on my bed. Around 
her was the peace of angelic calm ; around her was 
141 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


the freshness of youth and of beauty ; around her 
were all the loveliness and gentleness and tenderness 
of woman. 

Nellie had ceased to be my ward ; she was now 
my guardian. She had ceased to be my pet. She 
was now my little mother, as loving and as true as 
ever ray own dead mother could have been. 

“ Do you know, Nellie,” I said, “ that you re- 
mind me of my poor mother who died long ago ?” 

“ No,” she replied ; “ why?” 

“ Well, Nellie, I will tell you. Mamma mar- 
ried when she was only sixteen years old. I was 
her first and only child. She was then just seven- 
teen years old, and she died when I was born. She 
died that I might live. When the doctor saw that 
she was going, he said to the nurse, 1 She is sink- 
ing very rapidly. Bring her the baby so that she 
may see it before she dies/ The nurse then brought 
me, the baby, for her to see. 

“The doctor roused her, saying, ‘Wake up, wake 
up, Mary ; here is your baby/ 

“ Then the fading blue eyes of my little girl-mother 
opened once more for the last time. For the first 
and last time her childish face looked with pathetic 
love into mine. But her eyesight was growing dim 
and she could hardly see me, so she said to the doc- 
tor, ‘ Is it a girl or a boy ?’ 

“ ‘ It is a boy/ said the doctor. 

“ Then she took me for the first and last time into 
her arms. She kissed me and said, — 

142 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


“ ‘ Baby, your mamma is going away. Yes, so 
far away that she may never see you again. It is 
growing dark and cold, baby ; good-by ; God bless 
you.’ 

“ And then she died. 

“ I have often thought, Nellie, that when people 
die, they never live again, because my mother, who 
loved me so much, never has returned, and it seems 
to me that she certainly would if she still lived. 

“ But as I see you to-day, a different woman from 
my mother, yet so like my ideal of her, I feel that 
God has sent you to take her place.” 

Nellie did not answer, but she took one of my 
hands in her own. 

“ Nellie,” I said, fondling her beautiful brown 
hair, “ I can never forgive myself for my negli- 
gence with your money. I am short a hundred 
thousand dollars, — yes, a hundred thousand dollars, 
— and I can never repay it. I wish I could, Nellie ; 
but, God bless you, child, it might as well be a hun- 
dred million, for I haven’t a dollar on earth.” 

Then there came an ominous knocking at the 
door. I realized well enough what that meant. It 
was the sheriff, and I knew that the ambulance was 
below, ready to take me to jail. 

“ Beg pardon,” said the sheriff, “ but if you are 
ready to go now, I am here to take you.” 

Nellie understood all in a flash, but I merely 
said, “ All right ; wait for me out in the hall. I 
will dress and join you in a few minutes.” 

143 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


When he had left the room, Nellie rose quickly 
and said, “Guardy, guardy, this must not be. I 
forbid you leaving this room. You know that it 
will kill you to be removed.” 

“ Oh, no,” I answered with a dry laugh, “ I shall 
live long enough to wear striped clothes in the peni- 
tentiary for about ten years.” 

Nellie uttered a quick, heart-breaking cry, and 
convulsively closed my mouth with her hands that 
she might hear no more such horrible words. 

“ Listen,” she said, hurried and agitated, “ tell 
me, tell me, is it not true that by the law of this- 
State where a man owes a woman a debt and then 
marries her that the debt is satisfied ?” 

“Yes,” I replied, “I have been told that by 
lawyers.” 

“ Then,” she replied, “ I will end this matter by 
marrying you.” 

It is needless to say that I was aghast. Then the 
whole matter seemed so absurd that I could have 
smiled had she not been so serious. 

“ Why, Nellie,” I said, “ I am old enough to be 
your father ; I was thirty-nine years old last month,, 
and so I am twenty years older than you.” 

“ I don’t care if you are old enough to be mv 
father; I am not going to see you ruined, and 
neither will I let you kill yourself. So there 
now. Don’t say no, for I am going to have my 
way.” 

“But,” I replied, “remember I am a disgraced 
144 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 

man. What will the world say ? You know that 
I am innocent, but nobody else would believe it. 
You have brilliant opportunities ; you have a happy 
future before you ; you will be able to make a splen- 
did marriage with some true and noble man. I will 
not let you wade into the mire with me.” 

“ Guardy, it is useless to refuse me, for I am de- 
termined. You are innocent, and I will give up 
the whole world for you, no matter what people 
may say. You said that your mother had died that 
you might live. A woman died for you then, and 
now another woman shall live for you.” 

“ But, Nellie, I cannot bear to see you tied to me 
for life. You might as well be chained to a corpse. 
There are thousands of others, younger, handsomer, 
richer, better than I, and you perhaps love some one 
already.”* 

She did not answer me this time, and I, seizing 
the opportunity, continued, “ There, now, you see 
that I have touched you on a tender spot. You are 
in love with some one, and I will never destroy your 
happiness by condemning you to a living death with 
me.” 

Then she replied with great hesitation, but in a 
harsh tone, “ No, I do not love anybody.” 

u Nellie, you know as well as I do that you are 
telling me a falsehood. You do love some one.” 

Then, for the first time in her life, she gave me 
an unkind answer. Then, for the first time, she 
glared fiercely upon me. 


10 


145 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


“ It is wrong of you to accuse me of falsehoods. 
I don’t like that.” Then choking down a sob, and 
assuming an air of majestic tyranny which would 
have done justice to the Empress Catharine of Russia, 
she said, — 

“ I say you shall marry me.” 

She tapped a bell, and said to the servant who 
appeared, “ Go and send for a preacher. Any one 
of them will do, and if you can’t get a preacher, a 
justice of the peace will suit just as well.” 

I was now nonplussed, indeed. I could but lie 
there in bed with silent submission. 

Then the door opened and the sheriff reappeared. 
“ You need not wait with the ambulance,” she said. 
“ In a few hours Mr. Willis and I will be married. 
That will end the whole matter. Telephone the 
district attorney, and he will tell you so himself.” 

You should have seen that sheriff as he stood 
there with wide-opened eyes and gaping mouth, 
confused and abashed. But at length he recovered 
himself enough to say, — 

“ Yes, miss,” and then left the room. 

II. 

There have been millions of marriages since the 
world began, but I doubt if there was ever another 
so queer as the one about to take place. 

There have been millions of brides since the days 
of Eve, but as I looked at Nellie there, standing 
before the glass arranging her pretty white frock and 
146 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


combing her brown hair, I felt sure that there never 
had been a bride half so beautiful. 

After arranging her own toilet she took the comb 
and brush and began work on my head. 

“ You must smile now, guardy, and not look so 
grum. You know a bridegroom ought always to 
smile and look happy. 

“ But, oh, guardy ! You have grown so gray 
since I saw you last !” 

“ Yes, Nellie,” I replied, “ and all on account of 
that hundred thousand dollars.” 

She did not answer, but her eyes filled with tears, 
and she kissed the gray locks upon my forehead. 
Then she pinned some of her own lilacs upon my 
garment, took out her purse and abstracted from it 
a ten-dollar bill. “ That is for the preacher,” she 
said, with a laugh. 

As I gazed with inexpressible pity upon her lovely 
young face, I thought of her as a nun leaving the 
world to be the bride of Christ, which meant a living 
death. 

I thought of Juliet leaving Romeo to make her 
bridal bed with Death. I thought of Proserpina 
leaving the sunshine of Enna and all the beauty 
and blossom and splendor and sunshine of earth 
to become the queen of the world of darkness with 
Pluto in his midnight kingdom of ghosts. And 
then I thought of my dear little mother, who had 
died for me, lying in her coffin with her pale, sweet 
147 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 

girlish face, whiter than her wreath of lilies, and 
her childish hands crossed over her pulseless breast, 
purer than the snowy rose-buds clasped within their 
waxen fingers. 

But strange to say, Nellie did not seem sad at all. 
On the contrary, she was as bright and as cheerful 
as a bird. 

III. 

All at once there was the sbund of flying foot- 
steps on the stairs. Then the door was flung open, 
and Will Martin, a young friend of mine, rushed in 
the room. 

Will was a dear little foolish society boy, a sort 
of delicate moth who fluttered around the flame of 
fashion. But his heart was in the right place, for 
all that; he was one of the few friends who had 
been true to me during my calamities. 

“Have you heard the news, Albert?” he cried, 
out of breath. 

“No,” I replied; “what is it, Will?” 

“ Why, Albert, telegrams have been sent from the 
Eldorado lands in Nevada saying that rich gold 
mines have been discovered there. So all the stock 
exchange people say there will be such a boom in 
Eldorado stock as was never dreamed of before. 
Already the signs are that there will be a stampede 
on the market. This morning on ’change in Chi- 
cago there was an offer of five cents on the dollar for 
the stock. That was refused, and then ten cents was 
148 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


offered; that too was refused; and the latest is that 
fifteen cents on the dollar has been offered and 
refused.” 

This news was so sudden, so unexpected, so joy- 
ful that I almost fainted. My poor fevered brain 
whirled and swayed till I thought I would die. 

Then I heard Nellie say to Will, “ Run back to 
the exchange and bring us the very latest news.” 

Will rushed up the street to the exchange, which 
was in the next block, and in full view from my 
window. 

It was only five minutes before he returned, but 
those five minutes seemed five years. Then he 
dashed in like a madman. “ My God, Albert,” he 
cried, frantically joyous, “ you will soon be a free man 
again. Twenty-five cents was offered and refused in 
Chicago to-day. Then forty cents was offered, and 
a few shares were sold ; then the stock dropped back 
to thirty-five ; but after that it went up again, and is 
now selling for fifty cents on the dollar.” 

“ Oh, God,” I gasped, “ I who never prayed 
before in my life, beg that it may go higher and 
higher till I am a respectable man again.” 

Once again we heard the sound of flying footsteps 
on the stairs. Once again the door was flung open, 
and Judge Jackson, my lawyer, rushed into the room. 
“ Willis, Willis !” he cried, “you will soon be a free 
man. A telegram has just been received confirming 
all the good news about the Eldorado stock. The 
149 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


very richest gold fields have been discovered there. 
There is not the slightest doubt about it. The stock 
is now worth seventy-five cents on the dollar, and is 
rising every minute. Everybody wants to buy and 
everybody refuses to sell.” 

Hardly had the words left his mouth when Wig- 
gins, the broker, came in hurriedly. 

“ I understand you have a hundred thousand 
dollars of stock in the Eldorado Company. I have 
an offer from a customer to take it from you at 
eighty -five cents on the dollar.” 

“ He cannot accept such an offer,” replied Jack- 
son ; “ it is rising every minute, and will soon be 
worth much more than that.” 

“ Then I will give you ninety cents,” he replied. 

This too was refused, and Wiggins left as quickly 
as he came. 

Then Will, who had stolen out a few minutes 
before, flung open the door again, and cried like a 
lunatic, “ Hurrah ! hurrah ! Eldorado has passed 
ninety and ninety-five cents, and is now at par, — 
worth one hundred cents on the dollar !” 

My heart leaped with ecstasy. But I could only 
repeat over and over again, “ At par ! at par ! one 
hundred cents on the dollar ! One hundred cents on 
the dollar ! Once again l am a free man. Once again 
I am respectable. Once again I can look the world 
square in the face. Once again I am an honest man. 
Once again I can say that I am not a thief.” 

Then Will again rushed down to the exchange. 

150 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


Again he returned out of breath and brought the 
latest news. Oh, what news that was ! What news, 
what news! For Eldorado stock, after hanging at 
par for fifteen minutes as in a pair of finely-ad- 
justed scales, had been reinforced by new telegrams 
from Nevada, giving fabulous accounts of the most 
wonderful gold-mines, and in an instant the stock 
had made a magnificent leap from one hundred to 
one hundred and seventy-five cents on the dollar. 

So instead of losing a hundred thousand dollars, 
little Nellie in a moment had become richer by 
seventy-five thousand dollars. 

There could be no doubt of it. Even I, in my 
lonely room, on my sick bed, could hear the noise 
of the news upon the streets. From the exchange 
in the next square I heard shouts which could not 
be mistaken. 

Hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in the 
company had been taken among my friends and 
neighbors, and now the whole city was mad with 
excitement. 

I could see men rushing bareheaded from their 
offices to the exchange. I could see the telegraph 
boys running with messages everywhere. Then 
came to my ears that dull, deep sound from the ex- 
change which every one knows who has seen a 
stampede in the financial markets. 

It came from afar off, like the low, rumbling 
growl of a hungry wild beast. It filled my soul 
with a fearful joy. 


151 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


Then up the streets I could hear the newsboys 
shouting at the tops of their shrill voices, “ Here’s 
the Evening Advertiser and the Herald and the Sun ! 
All the latest news about Eldorado stock ! All 
about the gold-mines ! Here’s the Evening Adver- 
tiser and the Herald and the Sun /” 

Nellie ran to the window and looked out. 

“ O guardy, guardy !” she cried, “ I see them com- 
ing ; I see the little newsboys running up the street 
with the tidings of joy. I see one of them in front. 
He is a little barefooted boy with a torn straw hat. 
There he comes ahead of them all. Run, run, little 
boy ! Here is a bright silver dollar for you ! See ! 
I throw it out of the window ! There it falls at your 
feet ! Good-by, little boy ! God bless you ! Tell 
the good news everywhere ! Shout and sing it on 
every street !” 

Now the whole city was crazy with excitement. 
Bankrupts became capitalists; forlorn widows be- 
came dowagers ; poor girls became heiresses ; tramps 
became substantial citizens. The city itself seemed 
to rear and charge like a wild steed and leap and 
neigh to the sound of martial trumpets. How 
shall I tell of all the ecstasies of that day of days ? 
How the stock leaped again from one hundred and 
seventy-five to two hundred, from that to two hun- 
dred and twenty-five, from that to two hundred and 
fifty, from that to three hundred ; how from that 
there was a momentary depression which made it fall 
back to two hundred and seventy-five ; how when 
152 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


the good news flashed over the wires from far away 
in Nevada that. richer veins had been discovered, and 
as the tidings thundered and thundered from street 
to street the stock at one great bound arose from 
two hundred and seventy-five to the glorious figure 
of four hundred cents on the dollar ? 

Then, like a mighty ocean, it came with giant 
waves, resistless and omnipotent, sweeping every- 
thing before it till it reached five hundred cents on 
the dollar, when we sold ! 

Yes, so it was ! We sold for five hundred thou- 
sand dollars, and Nellie was richer by four hundred 
thousand dollars. 


IV. 

After the excitement was over, and all our 
friends had left, Nellie and I alone remained to- 
gether. It was now getting quite dark. There was 
still a dull red burning in the west, but the gloom 
was so deep in the room that we could scarcely see 
each other. She was sitting silent and pensive by 
the empty fireplace. 

I knew now that I loved her ; not as a child, but 
as a woman ; not that I cared for her as my ward, 
but I wished her to be my wife. 

But I said to myself, as I had said to her a few 
hours before, u I am old enough to be her father. 
There are thousands younger, handsomer, gayer, 
richer and better than I. It would be the meanest 


153 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 

selfishness in me to hold her to her promise, and, of 
course, I must release her.” 

“ Nellie,” I said, “ I can never repay you for 
what you have done for me.” But she gave no* 
reply. 

“ Darling,” I said again, “ of course I release yon 
from our engagement. But I will always love yon 
for what you would have done.” 

Still no reply came from her. “ You have saved 
my life and my honor,” I added. Then for the 
second time in her life she answered me harshly. 
“ Oh, well, you owe me nothing. I suppose you are- 
very glad that the discovery of those gold-mines has 
relieved you from obligation to me.” 

I pretended to overlook this cruel thrust. For 
some time I gazed with anguish at her in the gather- 
ing gloom, for I was now resigning her. I was a free- 
man again. I was respected once more in the sight 
of the world. But in regaining the world I had lost 
her, and she was to me more than all the millions of 
the world together. There was nothing for me in 
the future. Nothing to live for, nothing to hope for.. 
I was sorry to think that I could not die. 

She would now go back to the world, to be gay 
and happy always. She would be the bride of an- 
other man. It seemed to me that the disgrace and 
the shame and the degradation which I had just 
escaped would have been a happier fate for me. 
Then I began again, — 

" Nellie, it is growing very late now, and it is 
154 


A GUARDIAN AND A WARD 


time for you to go. You will some day find, I 
hope, a true, noble man, who will make you a good 
husband. But God bless you, Nellie, there is not a 
man in the world who is half good enough for you.” 

Yet, to my surprise, she answered in the same 
heartless tone, — 

“ Thank you, and let me hope that you, too, will 
find somebody more worthy than I to be your wife.” 

I was astonished at this queer behavior of Nellie. 
It was incomprehensible. Nevertheless, I continued, 
“Well, Nellie, it is growing quite dark now. Of 
course you are released from our engagement. 
Come and kiss me good-by.” 

But she replied fiercely, “ I will not kiss you. I 
hate you. Who said that I wanted to be released 
from our engagement?’ 

Then the whole truth surged upon me in an in- 
stant. She loved me, she loved me, she loved me ! 
She wanted to be my wife ! 

Again my heart leaped with wild emotion, again 
my soul was shaken with a storm of tumultuous joys. 

At last I recovered enough to say, “ Nellie, I love 
you. Will you be my wife?” 

Then came the answer which unchained my soul 
and carried me to the realms of everlasting hap- 
piness, “Of course I will. How stupid you men 
are ! Why, guardy, I never had but one sweetheart 
in my life, and I have loved you ever since I first 
knew you.” 


155 


TWO WOMEN. 


I. 

It was a very brilliant audience at the Fourth 
Avenue Theatre that night. 

As I sat in the box with Agnes, I could not help 
being seized with admiration, though I had seen 
great gatherings there many times before. 

For on this night Sarah Bernhardt had returned 
to the city after years of absence, to electrify thou- 
sands who imagined that her old-time glory had 
passed away. 

And now, as she faced this throng once more, 
it seemed that all the wealth, the fashion, the pride 
and the splendor of a great city had come to shout 
their allegiance and loyalty with more than the 
enthusiasm of by-gone days. 

As I gazed into the pit, observing the rustle of 
silks and satins and laces and fans and plumes, I 
thought of an oriental garden of poppies, re- 
splendent in purple and scarlet and yellow and 
white. 

As I looked over circle after circle of dazzling 
lights, curving one by one above each other in scin- 
tillating splendor, it seemed that the theatre was one 
156 


TWO WOMEN 


gigantic diadem of magnificent diamonds, fit for 
the brow of one of the great genii of the Arabian 
Nights. 

But I cared little for the acting of Bernhardt, 
and, after the first flush of admiration had passed 
away, I cared little more for the spectacle of that 
great audience. 

Beside me was Agnes, one of the richest and 
most beautiful women in the whole city. She was 
handsome indeed that night, gowned in one of 
Worth’s most elegant creations, with diamonds glit- 
tering in her hair and pearls beaming on her neck. 
We were to be married in less than a month. I 
was a poor lawyer deeply in debt, and I felt sure 
that hundreds were gazing at us and envying me 
my good fortune. 

Yet I was looking just then at a girlish figure in 
the circle below us, — a beautiful little creature with 
brown eyes and brown hair, in a dainty pink dress, 
with a bunch of crimson carnations on her breast. 
That was Maud, whom I had loved so much before 
I became engaged to Agnes. She, unlike Agnes, 
was quite poor. I had never ceased to love her, 
though I had sought to deceive myself a thousand 
times. Many and many a day had I made myself 
believe that she was forgotten, but whenever I 
would see her my face would flush, my heart would 
leap to my throat, and I would long to tell her that 
I loved her still. 

We had experienced a bitter lovers’ quarrel, and 
157 


TWO WOMEN 


though she was the more to blame, she would nei- 
ther make advances nor encourage me in mine. So 
we had drifted farther and farther apart, till at last 
the separation seemed permanent. Then, partly 
through spite, partly through ambition, partly 
through genuine admiration, and partly through 
fancied love, I had courted Agnes. 

There could be no doubt that, in addition to her 
wealth and beauty, Agnes was one of the noblest 
and truest of women. Still, neither could there be 
any doubt to my mind now that I did not love her, 
and that I did love Maud still. 

After the first flush of my triumph, after the 
flattery to my pride, after the first glow of my ad- 
miration faded away, I realized that I had been 
deceiving myself. 

Agnes seemed to me like a magnificent camellia, 
heartless and cold ; Maud was like a peach blos- 
som, lovely and sweet. Agnes was like a swan, 
proud and superb ; Maud was like a dove, gentle 
and true. 

I had that very morning ordered my wedding 
outfit; I felt as if I had ordered my shroud. I had 
just requested several friends to act as my attend- 
ants ; I felt as if I had selected my pall-bearers. 

Agnes had never seemed, so plain as she did that 
night. Maud had never seemed so beautiful. I 
almost felt that I could hate the woman to whom 
I was to be married. I felt like crying out to Maud 
to come and save me. 


158 


TWO WOMEN 


Presently I noticed that Maud had caught my 
eye. I nodded and smiled, but she only bowed 
without smiling and cast a look of unmistakable 
reproach upon me. 

Dear Maud ! She was so young, so innocent, 
and I had been so heartless. I felt that I ought 
not to wait for her to beg my forgiveness, but, as 
she was so artless, so unsophisticated, I ought to 
go to her, beg her pardon, and ask her to be my 
sweetheart again. 

But then the stately woman at my side, noticing 
my distraction, touched me and said, “ Come, John, 
and talk to me a little. Am I so dull and uninter- 
esting as this?” I started, surprised to see that 
the curtain had gone down, and that people all over 
the house had begun chatting again. Yet, while I 
strived and strived to entertain Agnes, she could 
not fail to notice my distraction. I remembered 
Owen Meredith’s “ Aux Italiens” and thought how 
completely that poem fitted my own condition. 

Then I said to myself, in the poet’s own lan- 
guage, u ‘ She is not dead, and she is not wed.’ I 
will return to her, beg her forgiveness, and, though 
we are both so poor, I will ask her to marry me.” 
But then I felt that I was in honor bound to Agnes, 
and, though my heart might be broken, I vowed 
that my promise should not. 


159 


TWO WOMEN 


( 


II. 

The next evening found me at the home of 
Agnes. I had intended to visit Maud that same 
evening, but a note from Agnes had been received 
calling me to see her. 

I was much embarrassed in her presence, but 
finally succeeded in raising my courage to the point 
of discussing the weather and the play of the night 
before. However, my embarrassment was soon 
ended in a heroic manner by Agnes, who, beckon- 
ing me to her side, said, — 

“ John, I have sent for you to say that our en- 
gagement is at an end. Do not interrupt me; I 
must finish. 

“ Last night at the theatre I saw by the way you 
watched Maud, and by the way in which your mind 
wandered from me, that you still love her and that 
you never loved me. No, do not deny it. Perhaps 
I know your mind better than you do yourself. I 
do not blame you. It is all right. Yet, while I 
believe that I love you far more than Maud does or 
ever can, I will not be so selfish as to stand between 
you.” 

I was so struck by her frankness that I did not 
dare attempt to flatter her with more lies. I did 
not dare to tell her that I still loved her when 
both of us would have known that it was not 
true. 

“ But, Agnes,” I ventured, “ we have given each 
160 


TWO WOMEN 


other our promises, and I for one will not break 
mine.” 

“ No, I have your promise no longer, because I 
release you fully. I do not blame you. I feel sure 
that you were sincere when you told me you loved 
me, but you only fancied that. So you must not be 
troubled about it. You are honorably released.” 

“ But, Agnes, this is too hasty. I am too poor 
to marry Maud. I could not ask her to share my 
poverty, and we would have to wait for years. 
Why break our engagement, when no one can come 
between us? I will try to love you more and more. 
I already admire you more than any other woman 
in the world. You are the truest friend I have. 
Then why may I not in time learn to love you as I 
should?” 

“ John, you can never love me as you love Maud. 
You may respect me, you may befriend me, but 
that is not what I wish. Loving you as truly as I 
do, I would not marry you at any time when I 
knew that your feelings were merely those of friend- 
ship. But you shall marry Maud, and very soon, 
too. 

“ Listen to me. You know that my uncle is 
president of the Indiana and Ohio Railroad. The 
attorney of that road has just died, and through our 
efforts you have been appointed attorney in his 
stead at a salary of ten thousand dollars a year.” 

My astonishment and gratitude were so great that 
I could barely stammer a few words of thanks. 

161 


11 


TWO WOMEN 


“ Now,” she continued, “ that will enable you to 
pay your pressing debts and marry Maud.” 

After talking together in a desultory way for a 
short while longer I arose to go, extending both my 
hands to her. 

“Are you not going to kiss me before you go, 
John?” ' 

I kissed her tenderly, but she was almost in tears, 
and as I reached the door I heaved a sigh to think 
that I was bidding farewell to the best woman in 
the world. 

III. 

The very next night I went to. see Maud. My 
heart was beating high within me, and I expected a 
happy, happy time with her. 

I had written her a long note that morning tell- 
ing of the breaking of the engagement with Agnes, 
asking her forgiveness, and concluding with the 
most endearing terms. I told her I felt that both 
of us had been in the wrong, but we could now 
forget the past. I told her that the engagement 
had been broken by Agnes because she had learned 
that I was inclined to my old love. 

I first wrote the note telling also of my good for- 
tune, by which I was now financially independent ; 
but for some reason unknown to myself I rewrote 
the note and omitted all mention of this fact. 

Maud’s reply was short and pleasing ; while there 
was no expression of affection in it, I felt that such 
expressions would have been improper under the cir- 
162 


TWO WOMEN 


cumstances, and so on the whole I was contented to 
hear from her in that wav. 

On reaching her house, however, I was quite dis- 
appointed to find two other visitors there before me. 

They were Jack Walker and Charley Pierce, two 
young fellows about as shallow as one usually finds 
in commonplace society. It was my unenviable fate 
to listen to their comments and observations about 
two hours before being relieved as they arose to go. 

They talked of the weather, of the german of a 
few nights before, of the latest fad in dress, of the 
next dance, of the most recent gossip at the club, of 
prospective marriages, and delivered themselves of 
heaven knows how much other such prattle. 

But while I was in a corner grinding my teeth 
with impatience, Maud entered into their idle chit- 
chat with the greatest relish. “ How is it possible,” 
I thought, “that she can endure such ridiculous 
insects as these ? Agnes would never tolerate these 
creatures.” Nevertheless, as they arose to go, she 
insisted upon their staying longer, and when they 
left she evidently lost them with regret. 

“Well,” said Maud, “I got your note. I am 
sorry to hear that you and Miss Agnes have broken 
your engagement, but I am glad to have you with 
me again, as your second choice.” There were 
ominous accents on the words “ Miss Agnes” and 
“ second choice.” 

“ You are very much mistaken, Maud. You 
163 


TWO WOMEN 


have always been my first choice ; I never really 
loved Agnes, and she knows it. She is one of the 
most generous and unselfish of women, and it was she 
who sent me to you, not because she did not care for 
me herself, but because she knew that I loved you 
and not her.” 

Maud laughed in a flippant manner, which did 
not please me at all. “ Oh, well, she is very rich, 
and so I imagined you would never let go of your 
own accord.” 

“ Maud, don’t be so hard on me. I declare to 
you that nothing but my love for you was the cause 
of the separation between Agnes and me.” 

“ I barely know her, but from what little I do 
know, I believe she is as selfish as women ever get 
to be ; I don’t believe she cares anything for either 
of us.” 

This speech was so heartless, so flippantly unjust, 
that I mentally rebelled against Maud, and con- 
trasted her with Agnes. 

“Come, now, Maud,” I said, swallowing my 
feelings of resentment, “ don’t treat me that way ; 
tell me that you love me as you once did.” Saying 
this, I tried to hold her hand, but she quickly 
snatched it from me. 

“ John,” she said, “it is useless to speak of love 
between us now, because neither of us have any- 
thing, and that being the case, I think we had bet- 
ter not carry this matter further. Let it all be over 
between us.” 


164 


TWO WOMEN 


“ But, Maud, you don’t know that I am now 
independent. Let me tell you all about it.” 

Then I related everything that had passed be- 
tween Agnes and myself. I was dumfounded at 
the change in Maud’s expression. But I was more 
mortified than surprised, for I saw at once that she 
only cared for my worldly prospects, and not for 
myself. 

“Well, John,” she began, “if you are inde- 
pendent as you say, and as I love you, I suppose we 
might marry. Do you wish me to fix the day ?” 

In my heart I thanked God over and over again 
for the happy thought by which I had omitted the 
news of my good fortune till the last. I knew now 
how shallow, how mercenary she was, and so I 
said, — 

“ Do not give me an answer yet. I want you to 
think well before you finally engage yourself to 
me.” 

I saw that she was disappointed, but I did not 
care for that, I saw also, as I arose to go, that she 
expected me to kiss her, but I did not, and in a 
formal way I bade her good-night. 

IV. 

Another young day, sharp, clear and crisp, had 
come, and I was on my way to see Agnes. The 
caresses of the morning air were as fresh, as keen 
and as merry as the kisses of a frolicsome gypsy 
girl upon the face of her lover. The skies were as 
165 


TWO WOMEN 


brilliant and as iridescent as though strewn with 
diamonds. The spring could be felt approaching in 
sunshine, mirth, and melody. At Agnes’s home the 
violet was peeping from the sod like a baby’s eyes, 
and blooms of the crocus and daffodil were scattered 
like a throng of golden butterflies. 

She was quite surprised on seeing me that morn- 
ing. But as she met me at the door in a white cap 
and apron (she was dusting the parlor), and as she 
blushed to meet me in such careless garb, I told her 
that I had never seen her look half so beautiful 
before, and I meant what I said. 

“ Have you seen Maud ?” she asked, trying to 
conceal emotion. 

u Yes, Agnes, and if she and I were living 
alone on Robinson Crusoe’s island, I would not 
marry her.” 

Then I told her of all that had passed between 
Maud and me the night before. 

u Now, Agnes,” I continued, “ last night I cou’d 
not sleep at all for thinking of you. I know now 
that you love me much more truly than Maud, and 
I have come to ask you again to be my wife.” 

“ But you do not love me,” said Agnes, now 
agitated as I had never seen her before. 

“ Yes, I do love you more than I ever im- 
agined that I could love any one. I offer you my 
heart as well as hand. You are worth a million 
Mauds. Agnes, if you will not be my wife, I will 
never marry any other woman in the world.” 

166 


TWO WOMEN 


“And I had said, John, that, for your sake, I 
would live to be an old maid. But our match 
would be too unromantic ; you are rejecting a poor 
girl to marry what you call a rich one. Novels 
ought not to end that way.” 

“No matter, Agnes, we will break the record, 
and the man who writes our love-story will give a 
new phase to the old hackneyed, yellow-back novel 
theory of the rivalry of the rich and the poor 
girl.” 


167 


THE TWO FRIENDS. 


Everybody in town knew Uncle Billy Brown 
and his dog Solomon. They had been inseparable 
companions for years. Many of the inhabitants 
could remember the time when Uncle Billy was the 
richest man in the village, was president of the 
bank, and rode around in a fine carriage ; but most 
of them merely knew him as an old drunkard and 
sot, who had formerly been very wealthy, but who, 
through drink, had become abjectly poor, and who 
had been abandoned by all the friends of his better 
days save this poor old dog, who had steadfastly 
refused to forsake him. 

Solomon was not a blooded dog ; no, not even a 
mongrel, but a cur of the lowest degree. He wan- 
dered at his master’s heels, with his tail curled 
over his back in that style peculiar to the cur of the 
meanest type. But his hair, which had once been 
a bright yellow, had long since grown gray with 
age, and his step, like that of his master, had now 
become quite feeble. 

Every winter people would say, “Well, there’s 
no use talking ; that old dog is on his last legs and 
won’t live till spring.” But, nevertheless, he did 
168 


THE TWO FRIENDS 


continue to live till far advanced beyond the time 
usually allotted to dogs. 

Tradition had it that many years before, while 
Uncle Billy was still a rich banker, he had picked 
up Solomon as a mere puppy from the sidewalk, 
where he lay shivering with wounds inflicted by 
sticks and stones thrown by cruel boys ; that he had 
taken him to his house, and still retained him thus 
when all other friends and all other chattels were 
lost in the gathering night of poverty and despair. 

It is a provision of nature that the dog becomes 
so faithful to the surroundings of his master that 
his own identity is completely lost. A white man’s 
dog will bite any negro who puts his foot in the 
master’s yard ; but a cur belonging to the meanest 
negro on earth will not tolerate any intrusion from 
a white man, though he be ten times a millionaire. 

So it was with Uncle Billy and Solomon. Many 
a time had they gone dinnerless and supperless to- 
gether. Many a time had they wandered together 
through the winter nights, without a home and 
without a bed. Many a time had Uncle Billy’s 
eyes filled with tears when some overly-zealous 
landlady would beat Solomon out of her yard with 
a broom-stick. Many a time would poor old Solo- 
mon have wept, if he could, when some rude bar- 
keeper or grocery man would order Uncle Billy out 
of his house with curses and with vile epithets. 

Drunkenness had long since become Uncle Billy’s 
normal condition. At times in years before he had 
169 


THE TWO FRIENDS 


made some spasmodic efforts at reformation, but 
even these had at last ceased, and soberness had 
become a dim tradition of the past. 

While the old man had become a confirmed vagrant, 
however, he still had many lovable qualities left. 
There was not a sick person in town whom he did 
not visit with cheering words ; there was not a child 
in town who did not love him, for many and many 
a time had he mended their broken toys. He would 
sit for hours fashioning little boats and windmills 
for them, while Solomon lay curled in sleep at his 
feet. 

The women of the village, too, found him quite a 
useful man about the house or garden, and they 
often zealously championed his cause when he would 
be upbraided by their less charitable spouses. Then, 
whenever there was a death in the town, Uncle Billy 
was always there to sit up through the night, to 
close the dim eyes and fold the cold hands over the 
pulseless breast. 

Matters had, however, gone from bad to worse, 
till it was evident that both he and his dog would 
soon cease their wanderings. His strength was- 
almost entirely gone, and his mind had become 
quite dilapidated. He would talk in a vague, gen- 
eral manner of his happier days, and often, when 
more than usually drunk, would imagine that he 
was again rich and happy and respectable. 

One bitter cold night in December he sat by a hot 
170 


THE TWO FRIENDS 


stove in Jimmie Dennigan’s saloon, mellowed by 
frequent potations ordered for him by a crowd of 
generous gamblers who were playing poker at a 
table near by. At this table Tim Scroggins, a 
fat, good-natured fellow, wearing an enormous dia- 
mond stud, was quite conspicuous. His less impor- 
tant companions, Ned Walker, Sam Polk and Steve 
Simmons, like himself, sat behind fragrant tumblers 
of hot-Scoteh and smoked and putfed at their cigars 
like so many volcanoes. 

All at once, after many hours of silence, Uncle 
Billy astonished the knights of the green cloth, as 
well as the priest of Bacchus behind the bar, by 
asking them if they needed any money, remarking, 
by way of explanation, that he had an abundance to 
loan, and that as they had been good friends to him, 
he would neither take interest nor require security. 
“You see, gentlemen,” he said, in his quiet, digni- 
fied style of by- gone years, “I am now on my feet 
again. There will be no more tramping through 
the streets ; no more starvation ; no more requests 
for assistance ; I am sure I shall never suffer from 
cold again, and Solomon and I shall rest from our 
trials*. But I shall never forget" my friends who 
have stood by me in my troubles.” 

The barkeeper replied, with a wink, that he cer- 
tainly would come around in the morning to have a 
thousand-dollar note discounted. But one of the 
men at the table glanced uneasily at the old man 
and shook his head. 


171 


THE TWO FRIENDS 


Finally, long after midnight, when the barkeeper 
was dozing in his chair and the poker-players were 
settling their debts of honor at the close of the 
game, the dog was seen licking the olct man’s hand 
and whining pitifully. 

Uncle Billy had spoken truthfully ; his trials had 
ceased forever. But Solomon was still left behind. 

It was a queer funeral whicli left for the cemetery 
that morning. By a subscription among the gam- 
blers, generously aided by the barkeeper and the 
proprietor of the saloon, a neat casket had been 
bought for the remains. Just after the hearse came 
a hack carrying Jimmie Dennigan and his barkeeper, 
Mike Sullivan. After them came another hack 
carrying the four gamblers whose acquaintance we 
made the night before at such a disreputable time 
and place ; all four were resplendent with diamond 
studs, and all were puffing away at their cigars. 
Then came an old negro man — known all over town 
as Uncle Si — with his portly wife, Aunt Dinah, 
both former slaves of Uncle Billy’s, riding to- 
gether on an old flea-bitten mare. Last came three 
or four small boys, intimate friends of the deceased, 
who had played truant that they might see the last 
of Uncle Billy. But first of all these went the 
feeble old gray dog, trotting dejectedly under the 
hearse containing the poor drunken master’s re- 
mains. 

There were dozens of people in town who would 
172 


THE TWO FRIENDS 


have been glad to attend this funeral had it taken 
place during the palmy days of the deceased ; there 
were dozens in town whom he had loaded with 
favors, for whom he had paid security debts in days 
gone by, and who were now considered prosperous 
and respectable, but who, for some reason, did not 
see fit just now to follow Uncle Billy to his last 
resting-place. 

The burial being quite an impromptu affair, was 
rather hasty and informal, but probably the old man 
did not sleep any the worse for that. After it was 
over, Tim Scroggins seized the dog, then by main 
force placed him in the carriage and took him back 
to town, remarking that “The poor devil shan’t 
want for anything so long as my head’s hot.” 

On reaching his lodgings, Tim proceeded to take 
the nap usual with him after a night of contention 
over the card-table, and he did not wake until night 
had come again. Then followed once more the 
bloodless battle of kings and queens on the velvet 
cloth. He won heavily ; and neither he nor his 
friends arose from the table until it was broad day- 
light. Then Steve Simmons asked him casually 
how old Sol was getting along. He started at the 
mention of the dog, as he had entirely forgotten 
him ; he hurried upstairs to his room, but soon 
returned with the news that Sol had disappeared. 
“ Well,” remarked Dennigan, “ it’s been a cold 
night, and I’ll bet five dollars we’ll never see him 
173 


THE TWO FRIENDS 


alive again.” Without exchanging more words, 
Tim slipped on his hat, rushed out of the house, up 
the street, and on to the cemetery. 

Dennigan was not mistaken, for when Tim 
reached the grave he saw that the old dog had by 
terrific efforts scratched far down into the frozen 
clods of the grave till he had reached the place 
where his master was, and there Tim found him 
lying upon the coffin, cold and dead. 


THE END. 


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